The Gathering of Elephants

This is the second part of a five part series of articles from Mr. Srilal Miththapala an wildlife and nature enthusiast who has spent 20 year on researching and building community awareness about the Sri Lankan Wild Elephant and the Human-Elephant Conflict in Sri Lanka. For more information about Mr Miththapala please visit his website: http://srilankaelephant.com/.

Its late afternoon. The open plains of the giant Minneriya reservoir gradually cools as the sun makes its way slowly glides down to the horizon. The waters of the reservoir shimmers in the receding sunlight. Slowly from the surrounding scrub jungle a large dark shadow appears. The first matriarch slowly ambles on to the open plains, followed by her family group. They slowly disperse around and start grazing on the lush grass shoots growing on the damp earth, exposed by the receding water of the reservoir. As if on cue, more dark shadows emerge, as matriarchs lead their herds out, and in a short while there are over a hundred elephants, large and small, ‘strewn’ all over the plains, eating, playing, jostling , drinking , bathing…… The Gathering has begun.

Photo : Srilal Miththapala

The Gathering takes place every year usually from about mid July until October, coinciding with the dry season in the North Central / Eastern province. With the drought, the available water resources in the area dry up, limiting the available water for the large number of wild elephants in the area. A fully grown elephant usually would require about 100 Liters of water per day and therefore, accessibility to a good source of water is vital to the elephant’s survival.

The Minneriya Tank or reservoir is situated in the North Central province, which is a huge, ancient, man made reservoir covering ……………. Hectares, constructed by King Mahasen in the 3^rd century AD. This reservoir fills up during the North –East monsoon. As the rains cease and the dry season begins, the drought takes it toll, and the water in the reservoir starts to dry up. Although the reservoir shrinks dramatically , it never really runs dry. As the water has recedes, it leaves behind fertile, moist soil, where lush grass quickly sprouts.

The entire reservoir is surrounded by scrub jungle, which opens out into the vast plains of the Minneriya tank. This provides an ideal and unique refuge for elephants during the dry season, where there is an abundant source of water, with nutritious grasslands, and also a readymade jungle cover, to retreat to, when the noonday sun becomes too hot.

Photo : Srilal Miththapala

This is the what really causes the now famous ‘Gathering’ of elephants at Minneriya. It is not a migration, but really a ‘coming together’ of a number of different herds of wild elephants from the surrounding areas of the North Central Province. It is surmised that elephants from the Wasgomuwa park, and from far off areas such as Kantale, make this annual visit. This is indeed a unique phenomena, not seen anywhere else in the world, where such a high concentration of wild Asian elephants are found in such a small area.

Interestingly, there are large numbers of juveniles in these herds, while a smaller number of mature male elephants can also be sighted, the most famous of which is the adolescent young tusker, and two mature tuskers, one with a single tusk, frequently seen among the congregating herds.

Photo : Srilal Miththapala

The gathering of elephants at Minneriya is therefore a wonderful opportunity for the wild life enthusiast and casual traveler to watch and observe the social dynamics of elephants at leisure.

Sri Lanka Tourism has realized the potential of this uniqueness event and has now embarked on a campaign to popularize and publicize this event, branded as ‘The Gathering’. Already thousands of visitors are rushing to view this magnificent sight, and if properly managed and publicized, this could eventually become as popular and well-known the world over as the Masai Mara Wildebeest migration.

The Gathering is fast becoming very popular, as seen from the visitor statistics of the Minneriya park. Foreign visitor arrivals to the park up to June this year showed a 43% increase from last year, with park entrance revenue going up to Rs.3.1M from Rs.2.1M for the same period last year (ref. Department of Wild Life Conservation). The temporary closure of Yala and Uda Walawe for a short period may have had an effect, but there is no doubt that ‘The Gathering’ is now fast gathering momentum!

However, the downside is that the Minneriya Park administration is not geared to manage this large influx of visitors. On weekends, it is a common sight to see 25-30 jeeps entering the park, many without trackers due to the shortage of staff. The open plains of the Minneriya Wev Pitiya have no clear demarcated routes, and jeep drivers, greedy for tips from the foreign visitors, often drive all over the grass lands to get a better and closure view of the elephants for their hires. This disrupts the elephants’ feeding, as well as their movements towards the water, and also damages the rich grasslands.

The Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka (THASL) along with many of the leading hotels in the area are planning a training session for the trackers, as well as the jeep drivers, who are also stakeholders of this event, to educate them of the importance of protecting the wild life and not disturbing it. It is important that they understand that we humans are the trespassers, who are invading the elephants’ territory.

Some concerted and urgent effort is therefore necessary – otherwise the disruption and stress caused to the elephants would soon result in them seeking greener pastures (pun intended!) and we would have killed the ‘goose that lays the golden egg’ – and The Gathering will be no more.