• SL is not only losing an endangered species
• It’s steadily eroding one of its most recognisable ecological assets
• It’s also losing a renewable source of foreign-exchange value

Elephant deaths reported in 2023 – 488. Tourist arrivals in 2024 – 2.05 million. Tourism receipts in 2024 – US $ 3.17 billion.

In January 2012, a double tragedy was reported near the northern boundary of the Lunugamvehera National Park. A female elephant had been shot, and the post-mortem revealed that she was pregnant. The bullets had therefore ended two lives: the mother and the unborn calf that she carried. The incident was shocking, but it was not exceptional enough to transform national policy. It entered the news cycle, drew grief and anger, and then became part of a growing archive of elephant deaths that Sri Lanka has learned to absorb with alarming familiarity.

That image, a dead mother with a calf that would never be born, should force the country to look beyond the language of isolated incidents. Sri Lanka is confronting a structural crisis created by competing claims over land, delayed policy implementation and a model of development that too often treats ecological movement as an inconvenience. Elephants are killed by gunfire, electrocution, explosive bait, train collisions and other causes; people are also killed, homes are damaged and farmers can lose an entire season's income overnight. The suffering is real on both sides. Yet, describing it simply as a war between villagers and elephants hides the decisions that produced the battlefield.

The arithmetic of decline

The available figures are stark. Reporting based on Wildlife Conservation Department data recorded 488 elephant deaths and 184 human deaths in 2023. For 2024, the reported total was about 386 to 388 elephant deaths and approximately 154 to 155 human deaths, depending on the date and dataset used in the report. Although 2024 was below the record level of 2023, it still meant that, on average, more than one elephant died every day. A peer-reviewed historical review of the human-elephant conflict (HEC) found that since 2019, Sri Lanka had averaged roughly 370 elephant deaths and 125 human deaths annually, placing the island among the countries with the most severe mortality associated with this conflict.

These numbers should not be read as a competition between human and animal tragedy. A farmer killed while guarding a field is not less important because elephants are endangered. A family that loses a home or harvest cannot be expected to celebrate wildlife tourism while carrying the cost of conservation alone. But, neither should the elephant be framed as an invading enemy. Elephants move through landscapes shaped by ancient routes, seasonal water and food availability. When roads, farms, settlements, fences and commercial projects cut across those routes, the animals do not understand cadastral boundaries. They continue to move - and the collision is then labelled the 'HEC'.

A foreign-exchange asset walking on 4 legs

The elephant is not only a cultural symbol or an ecological keystone. It is also central to Sri Lanka's international tourism identity. Images of elephants at Minneriya, Kaudulla, Udawalawe and Yala appear across destination marketing, travel documentaries and safari promotions. In 2024, Sri Lanka received 2,053,465 tourists, a 38.07 per cent increase from 2023. Official tourism research states that the industry generated approximately $ 3.17 billion in receipts that year and ranked as the country's third-largest source of foreign exchange. Wildlife is not the entirety of that income, but, elephants are among the most marketable and recognisable components of the national product.

It is difficult to isolate the exact $ contribution of a single elephant because tourists purchase a bundle of experiences: accommodation, transport, guides, food, park entry, photography and other activities. Nevertheless, preliminary Sri Lankan valuations demonstrate the scale of the economic logic. A 2020 analysis published, using data from wildlife parks and nearby hotels, estimated the annual tourism value of a wild elephant at about Rs. four million, or roughly $ 21,400 at the exchange rate used in that study. Other opinion-based valuations have produced much higher lifetime figures, but, such estimates depend heavily on assumptions and should not be repeated as established national accounts. The defensible conclusion is simpler: a living elephant can generate recurring expenditure over decades, whereas a dead elephant produces no future safari income, no repeat photography value and no contribution to the destination brand.

The economic effect extends well beyond the park gates. A visitor who comes hoping to see elephants may pay a jeep driver, a tracker, a homestay owner, a hotel, a restaurant, a craft seller and a transport provider. Wildlife tourism can distribute income into rural regions where alternatives are limited. A healthy elephant population therefore supports a chain of livelihoods. When Sri Lanka loses elephants, it is depleting a natural capital asset that cannot be rebuilt through an import, a loan or a marketing campaign.

The conflict was planned into the landscape

Scientific and journalistic evidence repeatedly identifies habitat loss, fragmentation and poorly planned land use as fundamental drivers of the crisis. A 2022 study assessing protected-area networks found land-use and land-cover change in every protected area examined and reported that 86% of elephant-death incidents occurred within five kilometres of protected areas. This suggests that drawing lines around parks is not enough. Elephants live across wider landscapes, including areas used by people. When protected areas become ecological islands surrounded by farms, roads and settlements, the edges become lethal.

Sri Lankan newspapers have documented the same pattern for years. Encroachment into elephant territory is a root cause of worsening conflict, while more recent coverage describes elephants as a national asset threatened by forest clearance for agriculture, settlements and infrastructure. Reporting on the Dahaiyagala corridor and Hambantota has shown how encroachment, disputed land claims and blocked routes can redirect elephants into villages. These are not arguments against housing, farming or development. They are arguments against placing people and infrastructure in known elephant ranges without credible mitigation, and then blaming the animals for the predictable outcome.

This is also where claims about 'ulterior motives' must be handled responsibly. There is evidence that land allocation, settlement expansion, cultivation and infrastructure projects have entered elephant habitat. There is also evidence of weak enforcement, political pressure and the delayed implementation of conservation plans. What the available sources do not establish is a single coordinated scheme to exterminate elephants for a particular population group. Evidence-based criticism is already powerful: successive authorities have permitted or failed to prevent land-use decisions that externalise the human and ecological costs onto rural families, Wildlife Conservation officers and elephants. Unsupported demographic allegations would weaken that argument rather than strengthen it.

Many methods of death, 1 policy failure

The causes recorded in mortality reports reveal how the landscape crisis becomes physical violence. Elephants are shot, electrocuted by illegal or improperly installed fences and power lines, injured by explosive bait commonly called hakka patas, poisoned, struck by trains or left to consume waste at open dumps. In February of last year (2025), a passenger train struck a herd near Minneriya, killing six elephants, including four young animals. Reporting noted that the area forms part of an elephant corridor linking major national parks and that train collisions have increased as habitat is degraded and elephants move in search of food and water.

Rail deaths are especially difficult to accept because they are technically preventable. Speed restrictions in high-risk zones, improved night-time visibility, vegetation clearance near tracks, sensor and warning systems, driver protocols and coordination between railway and Wildlife Conservation authorities are all feasible. Sri Lankan researchers have even tested seismic and electronic systems for detecting elephants. The challenge is less a shortage of ideas than the failure to move from pilot projects and committees to sustained implementation.

Electric fencing presents a similar contradiction. Properly located community fences can protect villages and cultivation. But, fences built along administrative forest boundaries may trap elephants inside inadequate areas or block traditional movement. Maintenance failures can render them useless, while illegal connections to mains electricity can be fatal. The policy question is therefore not simply whether to build more fences, but where fences should be placed, who will maintain them and whether they protect communities without severing ecological corridors.

The rural citizen alone cannot carry conservation

Any credible elephant policy must begin by recognising the fear and economic insecurity experienced by the affected communities. A household that loses paddy, bananas or a home cannot wait months for compensation or absorb losses for the sake of a national tourism brand. Conservation will fail when its benefits are national and commercial, but its costs are concentrated on individual villages.

Compensation must therefore be rapid, transparent and adequate. Crop and property assessment should be simplified, payments should be traceable, and insurance or risk-pooling mechanisms should be explored. Communities need early-warning systems, safe grain storage, lighting, well-maintained village fences and trained local response teams. Tourism revenue linked to elephant landscapes should also return visibly to neighbouring communities through jobs, local procurement, infrastructure and conservation payments. People are more likely to defend wildlife when coexistence improves rather than diminishes their security.

Sri Lanka already has a National Action Plan for the Mitigation of the HEC, prepared through expert consultation. It was reported in 2023 that implementation had been slow despite the Plan's scientific and practical recommendations. The country does not need another cycle of emergency meeting after each dramatic death. It needs accountable execution: named agencies, public timelines, District-level targets, annual budgets and independently published progress.

What must change?

First, land-use planning must recognise elephant range as infrastructure of national importance. Corridors and seasonal movement areas should be legally mapped, gazetted and protected before approving settlements, cultivation, roads or commercial projects. Environmental impact assessment must consider cumulative effects across a landscape, not merely the footprint of a single project.

Second, the Government should prioritise village-based fencing and remove or redesign barriers that fragment habitat. Fence locations should be determined by ecological evidence and community safety, not by the convenience of departmental boundaries. Third, railway mitigation must become an operational programme with enforced speed zones, real-time warnings and publicly reported collision data. Fourth, open waste sites accessible to elephants must be closed or secured. Fifth, wildlife crime investigations require forensic capacity and consistent prosecution so that electrocution, shooting and explosive bait are not treated as routine rural events.

Finally, the tourism sector should contribute directly to elephant conservation. A transparent portion of park revenue or a dedicated conservation levy could finance corridor protection, community safeguards and rapid compensation. Hotels, safari operators and destination marketers’ profit from the image of the elephant; they should therefore help finance the conditions that keep elephants and neighbouring communities alive.

A choice measured in $s and dignity

Sri Lanka's tourism recovery demonstrates that the country still possesses enormous global appeal. More than two million visitors arrived in 2024, and official receipts exceeded $ three billion. Yet, the nation cannot build a premium nature destination while allowing its most famous wild animal to die at a rate of roughly one per day. That is not merely ecological decline. It is brand destruction, rural policy failure and the liquidation of future foreign-exchange value.

The mother elephant killed near Lunugamvehera and the unborn calf found inside her are not symbols because their deaths were unusual. They are symbols because the country allowed the circumstances that produced them to remain familiar. Their story connects the bullet in one landscape to the blocked corridor in another, the speeding train at night, the failed fence, the uncompensated farmer and the tourist arriving with a camera to see an animal whose future is becoming increasingly uncertain.

The choice before Sri Lanka is not between people and elephants. It is between planned coexistence and unmanaged loss. Protecting elephants requires protecting rural families, enforcing land-use rules, investing tourism income in conservation and treating ecological corridors as seriously as highways or ports. The elephant is a renewable economic asset only while it is alive. Every preventable death reduces the herd, damages the country's reputation and erases decades of potential tourism value. In the ledger of national development, those are depleting $s - and a debt that future generations should not be forced to pay.

The writer is an eco-social entrepreneur who has been engaging in and supporting organic farming and agriculture with rural communities while harnessing traditional farming practices that incorporate technology and apiaries for regenerative agro-ecology 

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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication