Lanka opts for co-existence with jumbos
Published on: Saturday, March 23, 2019
By: David Thien
Kota Kinabalu: It is opportune for Sabah to learn from Sri Lanka’s human-elephant conflicts that has now successfully been managed into a better state of human-elephant co-existence.Dr Prithiviraj Fernando (pic) of the Center for Conservation and Research, Sri Lanka spoke of the atrocities suffered by elephants in Sri Lanka, from conflicts with humans at the International Conference on Heart of Borneo.ADVERTISEMENT
Sri Lanka today no longer herds all elephants into protected areas, but try to mitigate human-elephant conflicts in shared areas of co-existence.
“Can plantations and production forests be managed (like the case of Sabah Softwood) in a way that benefits elephants and allows co-existence?” asked Dr Prithiviraj
In other words, far from being lambasted globally for harming biodiversity and wildlife from mono-cropping or monoculture that harm the image of oil palm and forest management, can elephants benefit them? Is co-existence possible?
Human elephant conflict or HEC, is the biggest challenge confronting Asian elephant conservation. Asia has a very high density of people and an extremely rapid population growth rate.ADVERTISEMENT
Consequently, more and more land has to be opened up to feed the hungry millions and more and more land has to be converted to settle the landless millions.
“For example, even in Sri Lanka which has one of the lowest growth rates in Asia, the population density is over 300 people per square km and 750 more people are added to the population every day.
ADVERTISEMENT
“That means 7,500 more people every 10 days and 22,500 more people every month. To simply maintain the status quo, we have to find food, housing, clothing, jobs etc for 750 more people every day. So we have to open up and develop more and more.
“On one hand, elephants are losing ground. As in the rest of Asia, in Sri Lanka too more than two thirds of elephants live outside protected areas. With expanding human populations, natural habitats that are not designated as ‘protected’ are being converted to human habitats at an ever increasing rate.
“Where elephants once ranged have sprung up crop fields, where they once bathed and peacefully drank is now an agricultural reservoir.
“Every day, elephants are losing ground to the human tide. Their access to critical resources, are blocked by human habitations and fences. When they come out to water or to feed in an open area, they are chased away.
Trap guns, muzzle loaders, planks studded with nails left on trails, poison, all take their toll, killing and maiming elephants.
“In response elephants have become almost completely nocturnal and very secretive, taking flight at the sound of a human voice and hiding in impenetrable thickets during the day.
“On the other hand, Sri Lanka’s economy is largely agro based. The crops cultivated by humans have been developed over thousands of years of careful breeding to be highly productive, more nutritious, energy rich and very tasty.
“Unfortunately, elephants think it great to tuck into the bountiful harvest. Understandably the farmers don’t agree. Most farmers who cultivate in elephant ranges are very poor and their survival depends on obtaining a good harvest.
“They have to overcome a host of challenges such as insects, rodents, weeds, crop diseases, vagaries of weather, high prices of agro chemicals etc. to nurse their crop to harvest. Then a few days before the harvest, an elephant walks in and destroys the field... or after the harvest is gathered and finally stored in his mud hut, an elephant knocks down the house... Trying to chase it away may lead to injury or even death... with financial ruin and starvation of his family the result.”
Thus, HEC is a very complex and intractable problem with both humans and elephants the losers.
The farmers in Sri Lanka are provided with ‘thunder’ firecrackers to frighten off raiding elephants, and are helped to build fences including electric ones to keep elephants off their lands during growing and harvesting periods, but some fences can be dismantled after harvest to allow elephants to cross or roam the harvested crop lands.
He said, in Sri Lanka, the Department of Wildlife Conservation has been the main stakeholder tasked with human-elephant conflict mitigation, and efforts to track elephants with satellite collars are part of efforts to control human-elephant conflicts by trying to prevent them. About 300 young elephants are expected to be collared this year.
Conservation efforts have not been very successful in mitigating the conflicts and effectively installing a long-term solution to conserve elephants.
In Sri Lanka the main strategy for conserving elephants has been to translocate them into protected areas and to restrict them there by the erection of electric fences. The rationale for such management is that elephants living outside protected areas will be at risk from HEC, hence they should be moved to protected areas, where they will not come into conflict with humans.
The traditional management of these protected areas has been on a “hands off” basis, with little habitat management within them other than the rehabilitation of water bodies. A system of such protected areas linked by “corridors” to which elephants could be limited, has been previously envisaged as the basis for elephant conservation.
Protected areas can support only a certain number of elephants (the carrying capacity) – which is determined by the amount of resources such as food and water available for elephants in such areas, and density dependant factors such as aggressive interactions between elephants and tolerance of neighbours, disease outbreaks, parasite loads etc.
The current management of protected areas on a “hands off” basis, makes them sub-optimal elephant habitat. Over the next few decades, through natural succession, habitat in many of the protected areas will become progressively less able to support high densities of elephants.
Therefore, an approach of attempting to limit elephants to protected areas is unlikely to succeed and will be detrimental to elephant conservation, over the long term.
HEC occurs entirely outside protected areas. A significant segment of the elephant population, range entirely inside the protected areas, hence is not subject to HEC, and consequently has an assured conservation future.
Translocating a large number of elephants that normally range outside protected areas (and use the resources there) into protected areas, without large scale habitat alteration, will result in a severe competition for resources, within protected areas and jeopardize the future of those elephants that had a secure conservation future, but for our interference.
A single wild elephant consumes approximately 150 kg of food per day. Therefore a hundred elephants would require 15,000 kg of food per day, every day. Habitat management within protected areas to provide food for elephants at this scale would require a vast amount of funds and resources that would have to be expended indefinitely. It would also result in a massive loss of biodiversity, as a large number of fauna and flora, many of them endemics, require relatively undisturbed forest.
The trend now is to manage the protected areas and their elephant populations in their current context, as the core of future elephant conservation, as well as to manage areas outside protected areas so that together with the protected areas, they form a contiguous landscape for elephants.
Management of outside areas can be achieved by regulating smallholder cultivation. Providing facilities to smallholder farmers, so that they derive a direct conservation benefit from elephants being outside protected areas, and costs of having elephants in their area, such as crop depredation, are offset by other means including tourism attractions.Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express’s Telegram channel.
Daily Express Malaysia
Dr Prithiviraj also considers Sabah’s pygmy elephants as the most charismatic of the Asian elephant subspecies. “Can Borneo elephants become an icon of Sabah?”