Human Elephant Conflict (HEC): a Contemporary Threat to Rural Livelihoods in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Human Elephant Conflict (HEC) has been recognized as one of the key concerns in rural community development including their agricultural activities and livelihoods well. Unrestrained and insensitive clearing of natural forest habitats for human settlements and agricultural expansions have become the major causes for this HEC, which has arisen and reported to be problematic for many years. Being mega-herbivores, elephants necessitate a huge amount of daily feed intake and due to reduced extent of their feeding grounds and migratory drives, they tends to invade human settlements and raid croplands adjacent to their habitats. This phenomenon can be predominantly witnessed in Asia and some regions of Africa where the HEC is reported to be greater. Accordingly, Sri Lanka is one of the Asian countries which deem the elephants as a cultural emblem and also an ominous beast. Capture-transport, driving of elephants in to non-problematic areas, and different forms of elephant barriers particularly electric fencing and make trenches over protected areas are the most appeared tactics in Sri Lanka. In spite of this mitigation of HEC has become a serious concern in Sri Lanka over the decades as the number of reported incidences are still increasing, emphasizing that the emerged approaches are monitored to be ineffective in long-term. Besides majority of these approaches appeared to be less-sustainable and demanding frequent upkeep and energy. Therefore, it is mandatory to explore a technically sound and environmentally viable approach which can sustain over long-term coupled with satisfactory level of control