UDAWALAWE: After years of being bottle-fed formula milk, eight orphaned baby elephants appear reluctant to leave their temporary home, but mahouts heave-ho them onto trucks for a journey back to the wild.

The elephants are enticed with milk and coconut palm to climb the ramps into the trucks — the time has come to leave Sri Lanka’s Elephant Transit Home.

The trucks head deep into the Udawalawe wildlife sanctuary where the freed orphans will fend for themselves for the first time in years.

With luck the babies, aged between three and five years, will join herds among the park’s estimated 400 wild elephants, some of them also former transit home inmates.

“This is the eighth batch of baby elephants we are releasing since we started this programme in 1998,” said veterinarian Tharaka Prasad.

The 22 elephant keepers have developed bonds with their charges and the parting is difficult, said Prasad, who treats the wounded babies. “But we all accept that this is the best thing for the elephants.” Sri Lanka has been rescuing orphaned baby elephants for more than 35 years with state help, and the transit home is part of a drive to save the island’s endangered elephant species.

For Prasad and his team, who released their latest batch of charges last month, the real conservation breakthrough came earlier this year when one of their freed orphans gave birth.

“We released Sandamalee in 2000 and in 2007 she was pregnant and had a calf this year,” Prasad said. “This was the climax of our rehabilitation programme.” A total of 64 have been released since the first batch of four were freed in March 1998 and most have successfully re-integrated with the herds in Udawalawe, 210 kilometres south of Colombo.

Prasad said another 31 rescued baby elephants were currently being treated at the transit home — some were hit by trains, others shot by farmers, some were rescued from deep wells, and at least one was injured by a land mine blast.

DWINDLING POPULATION:

The endangered Sri Lankan elephant is a subspecies of the Asian elephant.

It is protected by law and considered sacred.

An estimated 12,000 elephants roamed Sri Lanka at the start of the 20th century, compared to a current population put at about 4,000.

Official figures show about 150 elephants are killed annually by villagers protecting their crops.

Conservationist and wildlife author Srilal Miththapala said shrinking habitat exacerbated human-elephant conflict.

“There is no point in preaching conservation to a farmer who has lost his entire crop or a man whose house has been demolished by elephants,” Miththapala said. “We must make sure people directly benefit from conservation.” He has called for expansion of wildlife parks and electric fencing to prevent wild elephants entering villages and destroying crops, particularly rice and sugarcane.

Environment Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said authorities hoped to involve residents in conservation efforts.

“The number of elephants in wildlife parks has increased, although overall there may be a decline in the number of elephants in the entire country,” Ranawaka said.

The minister said the Tamil separatist conflict in the island’s northeast was also impacting conservation efforts, with wild animals among the victims of drawn out fighting which has killed 60,000 people since 1972.

FOSTER PARENTS: Wildlife department veterinary surgeon Suhada Jayawardana said the mortality rate for elephants brought to the transit home had fallen to 15 per cent, from 40 per cent, in the past decade thanks to improved equipment and medicine.

But with each elephant needing 40 litres of milk daily, money for food was short, he said, and this is where a “foster parent” scheme, in which donors pay $1,250 a year to feed one baby, is a lifesaver.

Foster parents Gilbert and Mala Silva, Sri Lankans resident in Britain, recently visited their adopted baby elephant, two-and-a-half-year-old Sahara believed to have been hit by a train.

“We want to be able to give more to look after the babies here,” Gilbert Silva said. “Not many people know about the work here.” Sri Lanka’s tourism promoters now see the elephant orphanage as a potential destination for wildlife enthusiasts and holiday makers to the island, which has been struggling to lure visitors amid the ongoing Tamil conflict.

Foreign visitors were difficult to entice, said Sulochana Ramiah Mohan of Sri Lanka Tourism, adding: “But after one visit, we can be sure they will come again.”—AFP