Batting for Stumpy the elephant

Stumpy, the cricket bat wielding chubby blue elephant is the mascot of the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. It’s ironic that two key matches, Sri Lanka vs Canada and Pakistan vs Kenya will be played in the newly commissioned 35,000 seater Mahinda Rajapaksa International Stadium, set in the middle of a Sri Lankan coastal forest where Stumpy’s real life kin fight for their very survival.

This beautiful landscape is marred by numerous developmental projects. On either side of the broad Hambantota Bypass road one can find irrigated banana fields, tsunami rehabilitation settlements, and a flashy International Conference Centre to boot, carved out of the elephant’s natural habitat. As if that’s not enough, an international airport, a seaport and a railway line, are scheduled to be completed in the near future. Within a decade, Hambantota has transformed from a sleepy village to an enormous township, fuelled by President Rajapaksa’s ambitious plans for his home constituency. This could have very well been a run-of-the-mill case of development versus conservation, but it has not turned out that way yet.

About fifteen years ago, the Walawe Left Bank Irrigation Project brought perennial farming to the area. Then as more and more infrastructure projects started getting green-lit, the Wildlife Department was asked to move the resident elephants of the area to a nearby National Park. In 2006, an effort was made to drive an estimated 100 elephants out of this 600 sq km area, but to the great surprise of the Wildlife officials, they ended up moving around about 250 elephants to the Lunugumvehera National Park.

Even more amazingly, elephant biologist Dr. Prithiviraj Fernando estimates that between 300 and 400 elephants were left behind. And they still continue to forage in the 300 odd sq km of forests that’s left in the greater Hambantota area.

Strangely, the fate of elephants in the protected Lunugumvehera National Park was far worse than the ones who had to battle the developmental juggernaut sweeping through Hambantota’s forests. First, elephant calves started to die in the National Park, quickly followed by some adults. The rest of the poor elephants helplessly pace along the electric-fenced boundary, looking for a way out. Some have suggested that there is not enough foliage to support such a large population of elephants, though it is just as likely that they are home-sick.

Outside the Park, people’s problems with the animals escalated in-spite of half the area’s elephant population being removed. True, the pachyderms had lost about 300 sq km of habitat to the new developments but irrigated crops such as bananas, sugarcane, and coconuts provide easy pickings for them. The elephants that survived the trauma of tens of thousands of firecrackers bursting in their back-yard, and hundreds of people shouting and shooting at them, during the drive, had now become fearless. Normally shy and retiring animals, they were quick to lose their temper with any farmers who had the temerity to confront them. Out of desperation, farmers resorted to diabolical tactics such as hiding explosives inside pumpkins, which maimed many of the animals.

In this grim scenario, a World Bank funded project, raises the hope of not only resolving the issue but also creating a unique Managed Elephant Reserve (MER) (under the National Elephant Conservation Policy 2006), thus initiating a balancing act between development and elephant conservation.

For a start, the Hambantota area’s zoning maps have been overlaid with elephant distribution coordinates, until 2030. So any new infrastructure plans will have to take the animals into consideration. Some members of the Hambantota elephant herd are also being radio-tracked so that officials can get an understanding of how they use the landscape and how they react to any disturbance. This knowledge will enhance the overall management of the elephants in the area. However, the biggest challenge facing the project is human-encroachment into the newly conceived reserved areas. The people there want land for cultivation, house plots, and some indulge in just plain outright land grabbing. Although the MER allows existing practices such as rain-fed agriculture, it cannot sustain elephants if the habitat is splintered, fenced and diverted further towards human use.

The Hambantota elephants are not alone in their plight. Whether it’s Sri Lanka, India, Burma or Thailand,the equation between both elephants and their human neighbours is always tension riddled. At least here in southern Sri Lanka elephant biologists are being given the mandate to fight for a fair deal for the pachyderms. One wonders though whether Stumpy can also become the mascot for a new development-conservation paradigm.