Three hundred and fifty nine African tusks blood ivory estimated at Rs 368 million were smashed to dust in a special machine on Galle Face Green on Thursday after religious observances, in the presence of Cabinet Minister Gamini Jayawickreme Perera.
Sadhu! Sadhu ! would be the devout cry of lovers around the world of those magnificent beasts who were slaughtered by despicable racketeers aiming to sell the ivory at fabulous prices to adorn necks, ears and fingers of Hong Kong ladies without a conscience.
A-ho! A-ho! (Alas! Alas!) should be the cry of Sri Lankans who see their lovable beasts disappearing before their eyes each day, as shown on TV and reported in newspapers.
Conferences and seminars held to ‘Save the Sri Lankan Elephant’ have been galore for the past many decades. Learned papers have been read and even a national policy to save the elephant has been formulated but whether attempts were made to implement it is anybodys guess.
Jumbo counts
Elephant counts of the island’s pachyderms have been many but most of them are described as ‘educated guesses’. How much educated those well-meaning amateur surveyors are on wild life counts is any body’s guess. A count made by the Wild Life Department in 2011 (excluding the Northern Province) indicated a count of 5,879.
Some claim the numbers have increased while others hold the contrary view but the daily massacre indicates that this unique species of elephants, Elephas Maximus Maximus, who inhabited this island before humans of any variety, is doomed. Copious tears are shed by us for a variety of causes, even crocodile tears for crocodiles washed into the sea after the recent monsoon.
Massacre
But our tears, genuine or crocodile for our jumbos are of no use because successive governments with strong backing – public backing – have failed miserably. Sri Lankas demonstration of international solidarity to save the lovable beasts around the globe should be appreciated. But it is indeed heart rending to read reports of the daily massacre of our innocents by design, accident or necessity. They are shot and killed or wounded, poisoned, electrocuted, drowned in unprotected wells, knocked down by trains and even killed by that vicious local invention of an explosive Hakka-Patas which the animals pick up for food.
Elephants are a part – in fact the main component – of the Man-Animal conflict that is taking place now. The South West quarter of the island is now bereft of most from of wild life like in most ‘developed countries’ – the price for ‘development’. Elephants are herded together in small numbers – mostly in the dry zone and face extinction.
Man-elephant conflict
The battle for living space between man and elephant has entered a crucial phase with both man and elephant being killed but no doubt the supremacy of man will prevail — global phenomenon unless of course some daring strategies are implemented.
A student of the rural scene points out that the living standards of poor cultivators particularly in the Dry Zone have remained almost the same for centuries. Chena cultivators and paddy farmers still have their humble living huts on the field. When marauding elephants having exhausted the consumable vegetation of forests enter cultivated lands, the helpless cultivators have either to defend their crops by attacking the animals or flee. Electric fences have proved to be sham as daily reports indicate and cultivators now resort to the crude explosive devices, the Hakka-Patas that shatter the trunk and mouth of the animals as they pick them up and try to swallow them.
Food for the starving Jumbos
Part of the solution could be to provide sufficient vegetation by growing more edible trees within the jungle itself. The other could be to re-plan villages and the country side so that cultivators could live in planned out protected villages with the basic common amenities provided while their fields and farms would be away from home and be provided with safeguards to ward off the animals. We mere key- board strategists, by no means consider ourselves as authorities in this field and are merely passing down some thoughts of an experienced observer.
This government for good governance of Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe gives hopeful indications of breaking out of the beaten track such as in town and country planning. Fresh thinking is required if we are to save our precious jumbos. Age old strategies have failed.
Let tourism cough up
A great deal of money will be required. Since jumbos are a star attraction in our tourist propaganda, the tourist industry that has been blessed with subsidies such as tax holidays since the sixties, be asked to cough up millions if not billions for jumbos . The deployment of these wild animals for the entertainment of tourists in parched up tourist hotels even today illustrates the continuing exploitation of these animals .
Gifts of torture
Political exploitation of the pachyderms is too big to enumerate in this column and we will confine ourselves only to a solitary instance: Donation of Sri Lankan elephants as gifts of goodwill and friendship to other nations. Most of our leaders assume themselves to be ruling potentates and pose off that they can be generous with even our national heritage. Carried away by receptions accorded in a foreign land they offer a Sri Lankan elephant as a token of friendship from Sri Lanka.
Such animals lost or orphaned in the jungles and captured become the gifts of friendship of Sri Lankans to the children of those countries. Animals captured and chained are air- lifted to freezing climes and kept in cages for the amusement of children. These are not token of friendship but in reality token of torture gifted our stupid politicians.
Does our Foreign Ministry keep track of the fate of such unfortunate tokens of friendship?
Stop babies to save jumbos?
The man animal conflict will continue until the animals are extinct or man controls his biological urge to merge to limit his numbers. Only one country, China, did this successfully with their policy of: One family One child Policy. That of course is asking far too much in these ultra nationalistic times in this isle.
http://www.sundaytimes.lk/160131/news/photo-focus-one-by-one-our-elephants-fall-181268.html