Possible solutions to another ‘Elephantine’ problem
This is the fourth 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/.
Over the past two decades, Sri Lankan wild elephants have faced serious conflict situations with humans, resulting from encroachment and deteriorating elephant habitat in Sri Lanka, reducing the wild elephant population at the alarming rate of almost three per week. Of course, the politicians, who always seem to know more than the scientists and professionals insist that the wild elephant population is growing, and that it now exceeds 7000.
While we argue over this, there is a new crisis looming now for elephants, this time with captive ones. The recent event involving the removal of two baby elephants from Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage (PEO) to be gifted to the Dalada Maligawa temple, has generated a hue and cry, and there are numerous newspaper articles and feedback from readers. This has highlighted a new problem regarding captive elephants, and their well being in captivity.
In this context, I also joined the fray, writing to the ISLAND newspaper on 1st August 2009, trying to focus on the behavioural aspects, and close knit family bonds of elephants, especially during their young days. Since then, the outcry has increased and the problem still remains unsolved.
So, I thought it might be time now to look try and address this problem related to captive elephants, without emotion, and in a more rational manner. I know I am delving into an area, which I am not very conversant with. Most of my work has been with wild elephants and not tame ones. In fact deep down, I honestly think that these magnificent animals should be roaming free in the wild ,and not kept in captivity at all, most often in deplorable conditions.
I have stood before the elephant enclosure at the Dehiwala Zoo and looked into the ‘soul less’, blank eyes of the elephants, aimlessly swaying back and forth (which incidentally is a serious stress disorder called ‘stereotypies’ ). One has only look into the eyes of a wild elephant in one of the national parks, to see the difference. Looking into Walawe Raja’s ( the magnificent tusker who visits the Uda Walawe National Park regularly) eyes, I have felt my adrenaline rush, and heart pound to see the profound energy and wild aggressiveness lying latent deep within. However, I know sadly that perhaps Zoos are today a necessarily evil.
Steriotypies-stress related behavior- Photo Srilal Miththapala
So, without further ado, let me reflect upon some of the issues and facts related to this problem.
1. Elephants and Sri Lankan Culture–Elephants have had a very close relationship with man, and in particular with the Buddhist religion for centuries. Hence there is no doubt that the elephant plays an important role in traditional Buddhist and Sri Lanka culture. So there may be a case for maintaining a stock, of well looked after, trained elephants for use in religious activities.
2. Traditions– However, with modernization and the inevitable changes taking place around us, sometimes, it is difficult to blindly to hold on to our old traditions. Although, traditions are important, sometime it may be necessary, due to practical reasons, to slightly modify or change them to suit today’s world. Otherwise there is a real danger that traditions will altogether die out. (My mind goes back to the famous film ‘ Fiddler of the Roof’ where Tevya goes through the trauma of gradually seeing and accepting the changing traditions of his old village change, as his three young daughters find husbands on their own choice.)
Hence although temples have had their own tame elephants in the past, as tradition decrees, maybe now things have to change. Each and every temple cannot aspire to having elephants, nor to having as many a number they have had, in the past.
3. Capturing wild elephants- While the human elephant conflict HEC) is certainly prevailing, in spite of laws governing the shooting of elephants, the ban on capturing elephants from the wild is on the other hand is certainly being implemented well. So we can conclude that elephants are hardly ever captured from the wild now. So there is no possibility of replenishing the tame elephant stocks as in the days gone by. In fact this has led to the gradual vanishing of the famous Panikkans, who were excellent elephant trappers.
4. Depleting population of captive elephants–The captive elephant population of Sri Lanka is therefore fast dwindling. I am told by my friend Mr Jayantha Jayawardena, who has done some studies on captive elephants, that the numbers have come down from around 700 in the 1940’s to less than 100 today. ( Apparently the Kandy Perahara this time could not muster more than 50 elephants for this magnificent world renowned festival)
5. Pinnawela–The Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage (PEO) (the less said about it , the better), which should have being the world’s leading captive elephant research and scientific establishments, has today degraded into a large ad hoc stable of elephants, living in poor unhygienic conditions, growing in numbers and breeding haphazardly without any proper scientific intervention. A well-known wildlife expert Mr Vasantha Nugegoda recently told me, in his own inimitable way ‘ What the …… are they doing at Pinnawela? The elephants are breeding like cattle all over’!”
Due to the ongoing HEC (re. which there is no clear solution evident in the near future) elephants will continue to be found abandoned or injured in the wild, and either bought to the PEO or the Uda Walawe elephant transit camp (UWETC). So, the ‘artificial herd’ at Pinnawela will keep growing, as its management struggles to cope, and the facility continues to degrade.
6. Mahouts –Elephants, as I indicated in my early article of 1st August 2009, have complex and close-knit family ties and behavioural patterns. In a similar way, the bond between captive elephant and mahouts is also very close and complex one. Therefore, if captive elephants are to be properly cared for in captivity, one needs good mahouts. ‘Mahouting’ is a ‘dying profession’ today. There was a study done recently (see box), which found that hardly any mahouts are passing down their age old wisdom of dealing with elephants, down to their sons. It is no longer a worthwhile livelihood, and the tradition longer passes down. So now it is more by a chance, and a desire to find some form of work, that mahouts are trained and ‘produced’.
I recently spoke to a mahout who looks after one of the most healthy and majestic tame elephants in Dambulla (‘Monika”) and I was sad to hear that he has been a her mahout for only two years. Normally a mahout would spend his whole life with elephant.
Therefore if we are to successfully continue keeping tamed elephants, we need to ensure that there are sufficient well trained, proper mahouts
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