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Why a comprehensive conservation policy and stringent laws should go hand in hand to stop brutal killings of tuskers
By Shanika Sriyananda
In the wake of the killing of one of Sri Lanka’s most ironic tuskers, the Galgamuwa crossed tusker which is fondly known as the Dala Poottuwa, the environmental groups and concerned Sri Lankans have started lobbies demanding that the Government introduce tougher laws to give maximum penalties for killing elephants which they describe as ‘premeditated murders’.
The six-foot majestic Dala Poottuwa, weighing 5,000kg, according to conservationists, had over 50kg of ammunition lodged in his body after poachers shot at him.
The Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS) in a press statement stated that the killing of any wild elephant, especially of a tusker, a national treasure, should be declared a crime against the State, and the punishment meted out should fit the crime. The Galgamuwa Crossed Tusker was not a victim of the Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC) but was targeted solely for his tusks. Legislation should be introduced that adequately reflects the gravity of this offence and justice meted out accordingly. In addition, those who commit such dastardly acts should be treated with the social contempt befitting traitors of the State.
“A gentle creature whose tolerance of his human neighbours was legendary; he yet bore the scars of previous hostile encounters with people, his body pockmarked with a multitude of gunshot wounds. Despite this, and blinded in both eyes, he continued to be patient with people and walked away from any confrontation. His reward – this bloody death and his tusks sawn off to be made into trinkets for the unworthy,” the WNPS release stated.
At a press conference cum awareness program on the plight of jumbos in the country, a group of influential environmentalists highlighted the immediate need for implementing a National Policy for the Conservation and Management of Wild Elephants (NPCMWE) in the country and strengthening the existing laws to give maximum punishment to the killers.
The President of the WNPS Rukshan Jayewardene said that they all gathered in Colombo to celebrate the life of a great tusker Dala Poottuwa and also mourn its unkind demise at the hands of the brutal killers.
According to WNPS, about 6% of male elephants in Sri Lanka have tusks and there may be less than 100 adult tuskers, if that many, alive in the wild today. Most of the adult male elephants, including the Galgamuwa crossed tusker, lived much of its life outside of the protected areas due to much of their original habitat being lost to unplanned development and illegal encroachment.
Giving an overview of the history that created the Elephant Human Conflict (HEC), Jayawardena said: “They are the rightful owners of this island as much as we are but the conflict is old; the cooperation is minimal; the need for humans to impose their will on elephants is huge.”
However, he said that with no NPCMWE being implemented yet, they would push the authorities to have the policy adopted and had already made proposals for the draft policy.
“We have submitted new changes on some key requirements to be included in it. They are raising awareness among the stakeholders, the role of the Department of Wild Life Conservation (DWLC) in elephant conservation, elephant drives, strategic fencing and societal role,” he said.
“Without a policy, conservation is blind,” he stressed.
Editor in Chief of Sunday Rivira paper and an environmental activist Nayanaka Ranwella, urged the DWLC to destroy all ivory, which he called “blood ivory”, in their custody by burning them adding that the conservationists would otherwise protest against the DWLC.
He condemned the DWLC for committing an offence by displaying the head of the country’s biggest tusker – the Siyabalanduwe tusker, which died at the hands of the DWLC, at its entrance.
“The DWLC displays his head at the department’s entrance. He died as the DWLC had ignored the scientific proof which clearly showed that the elephants can’t be relocated from their home range. The department had secretly transported the tusker to another location and he died due to a fall from the deck of the lorry, where his leg got trapped in the broken deck,” he said.
Ranwella accused the DWLC of behaving similar to the poachers by storing blood ivory. “For a long time we have been requesting the DWLC to burn the ivory stocks publicly and not to give any price for the tusks, but they have failed so far.”
He said that they had requested the Wildlife Minister Gamini Jayawickrama Perera, during a meeting with the ministry officials and the DWLC officials, to get the telephone call recordings of the officials who were alleged to have been involved in the killing of the tusker. However, nothing had been done so far except the transferring of the Assistant Director of the DWLC, who is alleged to be involved in the killing of the tusker, to Colombo.
“Is this punishment enough for an official who is suspected of being involved in the killing of a country’s treasure,” he questioned.
Ranwella said that the other tuskers were still facing danger as no short-term actions had been taken so far to protect the already threatened tuskers who roam around with a barrage of ammunition shot by poachers. “A herd of over 75 elephants, who eat polythene at the Digganpathana garbage dumping site, and the elephants at Wilpattu are at risk. The whereabouts of the giant tusker who comes once in two years to the Kaudulla National Park has not been tracked so far.”
He revealed that 57 locations under the purview of DWLC were subjected to garbage dumping and wild animals including elephants were at risk due to polythene.
Ranwella, spelling out plans – short, medium and long term – which they had proposed during their meeting with the Minister, said that it was a surprise to know that the DWLC top officials were unaware of some of the latest technologies used by other countries including neighbouring India to protect its wild elephants.
“We have requested the DWLC to implement a similar pilot project to protect wild elephants. As short term remedies we proposed to manage the garbage dumping sites, collar system to track wild elephants and tuskers, and also to commence patrolling to minimise the threat to these animals,” he said.
Recycling solid waste or prohibiting garbage dumping and setting up an intelligence unit to nab poachers are cited as medium term solutions and the long term solutions included maintaining the habitats of the wild elephants and avoiding acquiring lands belonging to them when designing development projects.
He said the Handapanagala elephant herd was relocated when land was acquired for the sugar cane industry but they returned to their home range while over 100 wild elephants in this herd died during the two decade long HEC.
“Relocations are proven failures as the wild elephants fight for their habitat. After erecting a fence dividing the Yala National Park by the DWLC, 14 elephants had died during the last three-years,” he said, adding that their concern is not only conserving wild elephants but also all other species and their habitats.
Dineth Mallikarachchi, another environmentalist, had also highlighted the urgent need for implementing a national policy to protect wild elephants. He said Costa Rica, which is a country with similar features to Sri Lanka could be the best the model to follow in order to protect the country’s wild elephants and also to increase forest cover.
“After introducing the national policy, they have been able to stop the killing of wild elephants and also managed to increase the country’s forest cover by 60%,” he said while inviting all concerned citizens to rally against the deforestation of Willpattu.
He said that over 400 wild elephants have lost their habitat due to ill-planned development projects like Mattala Airport project.
He claimed that some influential people have already encroached the 15,000 acres of land designated to the proposed elephant conservation area and this would again aggravate the HEC.
Environmental lawyer Wardani Karunaratne, stressing the need of having more public pressure against the killing of wild elephants, said the event was just a starting point to lobby and influence the decision makers and policy makers to bring relevant changes to the system.
Giving a brief introduction on legal protection given to elephants, she said that there was a serious question of enforcement and implementation of law in the country.
“If you look at the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance, which is a very old piece of law introduced in 1949 and amended from time to time, with the latest amendment done in 2009, the stringent mechanisms and provisions provided for the protection of wildlife are mostly to be enforced within the protected areas. Still we believe that it does not deal with the offences related to iconic species such as elephants,” she explained.
Karunaratne said that even though the law was amended in 2009, still the colonial practices like exporting and trading of elephants were allowed under the law.
“Under Section 18 of the Act, it says the tusks are considered to be public property. It means that nobody can keep tusks in the vicinity unless it is properly registered. One should question how a person can register the tusks. Unfortunately these practices came down during the colonial period where hunting and shooting were allowed,” she added.
However, Karunaratne claimed that in the 2009 amendment, even decades after introducing the very old law in 1949, those ridiculous laws and provisions are still prevailing in the country.
“How can we expect people to abide by law, expect the DWLC and other officers to enforce the law, when the law itself has provisions for exporting, trading, permitting killing and other illegal activities?”
Karunaratne said that when a wild elephant was killed outside the protected areas, the penalty would be two to five years imprisonment or a fine of Rs. 150,000 to Rs. 500,000. When it happens inside the protected areas it would be five to ten years imprisonment or a fine of Rs. 250,000 to Rs. 500,000.
“Over 47% of wild elephants are being killed outside the protected areas,” she said “The Government has a great obligation to protect the wild elephants but also an international responsibility as it had signed many international conventions to protect them,”
She urged the Government to introduce tough laws to protect wild elephants. “This is worse than killing a man. It is premeditated murder. A minimum of 25 years rigorous imprisonment or a fine of more than Rs. 1 million should be given to these killers,” she suggested.
In December 2015, the Minister for Wildlife and Sustainable Development set up a committee to upgrade the draft policy of 2006, which had also not been implemented, except for an action or two in isolation from the rest of the proposed policy.
The Committee was chaired by Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando, the leading expert on elephant conservation and the human elephant conflict mitigation in the country, and consisted of senior officers of the DWC, past and present, representatives from the Forestry Department, officials of the Ministry of Wildlife and Sustainable Development, and conservation organisations including the WNPS as well as eminent academics.
By mid-2016, this committee had readied a draft National Policy on Human-Elephant Coexistence based on the following definition of it:
“The occurrence of people and elephants in the same landscape, sharing resources through temporal partition or physical separation at a fine geographic scale. It requires managing elephants through understanding their needs, increasing the tolerance of people, adopting non-confrontational methods of crop protection and providing economic benefits from elephant conservation to communities that co-exist with elephants.”
In addition, action plans were formulated for the implementation of each principle as identified in the above definition, which would also have had legal standing to support their enactment. Included in these plans were proposals for strategic fencing, habitat enrichment, conserving elephants in FD areas, those populations outside of protected areas, impacts from development projects where it was recommended that Environmental Impact Assessments be superseded by Strategic Environment Assessments (SEAs) where appropriate, and the potential for economic benefit to local communities from having wild elephants as permanent neighbours.
Most importantly, the final document was to be placed for public scrutiny and comment, to ensure complete transparency and to obtain further suggestions for the possible strengthening of the proposals given in it.
As at present, when the Human-Elephant Conflict takes up the majority of the time of the field officers of the DWC, it is of serious concern that they do not operate to a defined policy and, at times, take ad hoc decisions, especially on the placement of fencing following local political pressure, that in the long term further exacerbates rather than resolves the problem.
In this situation the WNPS requests the minister to immediately have the final draft of the National Policy on Human-Elephant Co-existence for 2016 placed for public scrutiny and comment; thereafter, and no later than March 2018, to have the policy, including any further amendments, adopted and implemented by the DWC to ensure a uniform and effective solution to this ever-worsening problem, the WNPS stated in a release.
