A council paper submitted by Vice President, Eng Granie Jayalath on 7th May 2021 , drawing the attention of IESL to get intervened and to have an amicable solution towards the 70 years old Human- Elephant Conflict ( HEC) our country facing, was approved to proceed on.
Preamble
Since 1940, Human-elephant conflict (HEC) has become a serious socio-cultural and socio-economic problem in Sri Lanka. Globally, Sri Lanka had the highest annual elephant deaths and second highest human deaths, due to HEC. Though in average 250 elephants die annually, in year 2018 it exceeded 300 and in year 2019 it surpassed 400 deaths. Similarly, 96 humans died in year 2018 and it was 120 in year 2019. Today elephants live within 62% of the land area of the country. Within 44% of the land area elephants and people live together with conflicts.
Measures we had been adopting so far had not been successful to mitigate the HEC. Meanwhile in year 2006, a policy had been formulated depicting how HEC could be resolved following the “co-existence philosophy”, but it has not yet been implemented.
Call for members to join the team
In order to arrive at a viable ideology, certainly, we need a multi-disciplinary approach with contributions of all concerned stakeholders, including the contributions of citizens, villagers and farmers. IESL intends to develop a policy directive to this Socio- cultural and Socio-economically sensitive issue with the intention of submitting to his Excellency the President and other respective stakeholder institutions. Those who are interested and willing to contribute, are kindly requested to inform the Manager Publicity, IESL via email mgr.pub@iesl.lk on or before 18th May 2021. The TOR and the action plan are to be circulated among the members of the committee on 20th May 2021.
