Human- Elephant conflict in Sri Lanka

African elephant’s misfortune is its tusks, which are carried by both sexes, and for which ivory poachers slaughter it in large numbers. Among Asian elephants, females do not have tusks and not all the males carry them either. In Sri Lanka, 93% of the bulls are tusk less and are referred to as maknas. Since, 7% of tuskers are present in Sri Lanka, ivory poaching is a minor conservation problem. Much more important for Asian elephant are habitat loss and fragmentation due to the high human population.  Changes in the land-use patterns are resulting in a continuous contraction of habitat available to the elephant. Over much if the island of Sri Lanka, given its small size (65,610 km²) and there is no longer room for elephants to move about and adjust their densities to changing vegetation pattern.

Except at lowest densities, large wild animals and humans are fundamentally incompatible. This incompatibility increases rapidly as both animal and human densities increase.  The conflict between man and elephant is the result of competition for land and its resources, and it has become one of the most serious conservation problems, for which general solution remains still elusive. Crop raiding by elephants is a chronic problem in areas where cultivators live in close proximity to elephants. In addition the conflict includes crop depredations, destruction of houses and properties by wild elephants, loss of human lives, and the death of elephants from land mines. Elephants also kill and injure livestock and disrupt the social and economic activities of the local communities. The traditional approach towards mitigating the conflict in Sri Lanka has mainly depended on legislative protection of the species and reservation of its habitat.

      Source:http://sanjaygubbi.blogspot.com/

Elephants are not being killed in Sri Lanka mainly because they interfere with agriculture. The loss in elephant lives, if allowed to continue unchecked, would become unsustainable, given the relatively small size of the local elephant populations and their slow rate of reproduction. Disproportionate killing of one sex can alter the adult sex-ratio. In Sri Lanka, the adult male: female sex ratio is 1:3, which is not as skewed as what is seen in Periyar Tiger Reserve in South India, where the adult male: female sex ratio reached a peak of 1:122 in 1987-1989 through indiscriminate poaching of tuskers.