Managed Elephant Reserve Concept, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, Hambantota: Human/Elephant Conflict Continues to Rise, and Officials Continue to Drag their Feet!
450 Elephants roam this area, bouncing between fragmented forest patches. Many of those elephants were displaced when the former Rajapaksa government essentially gave away 15,000 hectares of prime coastal lands to the Chinese for industrial development. This was done in a sneaky debt swap trick the Chineses laid upon Rajapaksa. The Chinese continue to steal land in this same manner from countries throughout South and SE Asia.
The Managed Elephant Reserved (MER) CONCEPT came into existence over ten years ago in an attempt to connect separated (disjointed) national parks in the Southernmost region of Sri Lanka.
The MER includes critical elephant corridors between Lunugamvehera National Park and Udawalawe National Park, including elephant corridors the Koholankala - Keliyapura Elephant Corridor, the Unathuveva Elephant Corridor and the Thanamalwila Elephant Corridor, all of which are supposedly overseen by the Department of Forest Conservation.
The MER concept took on added importance when the Chinese began development of Hambantota's lush coastal plain by building a professional cricket stadium, the Rajapaksa Port/marina, an international airport, huge industrial development zone and an International Conference Hall. All are white elephants!
Hand in hand with approval of the Rajapaksa/China 15,000 acre development was the promise of environmental mitigation. The promise was granted via an extensive environmental impact mitigation plan or Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
To offset the huge impacts of the Hambantota industrial developments, the EIA relied upon the implementation and even an expansion of the MER concept promulgated a few years prior.
None of these things have been done. Human/elephant conflict (HEC) continues to rise and politicians, both local and distant wonder why!
This is not rocket science.
Land within the MER continues to be illegally occupied and expanded upon - some with the blessing or even gifting by local politicians. These politicians have no authority to do so. The Ministry of Environment wants to know if people witness illegal land activities within the MER. They want locals to call them directly, and they will enforce existing laws: https://www.newsfirst.lk/.../multiple-hotlines-to.../
