Claims of a spike in elephant deaths in Sri Lanka this year — amplified by social media and public officials — don’t add up, reports Mongabay contributor Malaka Rodrigo. In fact, analysis of the existing data shows a slight decrease from recent years.
The claims are fueled by several headline-grabbing elephant deaths in Sri Lanka that triggered public outrage. These include deadly train collisions that killed multiple elephants, and the painful death of the iconic tusker Bhathiya from gunshot injuries.
Some environmental activists and even the country’s environment minister urged further investigations into what they suggested was organized killing of elephants — including by snipers — for their tusks or meat, or to eliminate crop-raiding individuals.
However, Rodrigo gained access to elephant mortality data from the country’s Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), which showed that 245 Sri Lankan elephants (Elephas maximus maximus) died between January and July this year. That’s down from the 260 recorded deaths during the same period in 2023, and 257 in 2022.
“There’s a lot of misinformation in both mainstream and social media,” said Pathum Bandara, a wildlife photographer and elephant enthusiast, who tracks herds in Sri Lanka’s northwest, where human-elephant conflict is high. “On the ground, we don’t see a dramatic spike, though the toll remains high. Sri Lanka’s elephant deaths have remained high in recent years.”
Bandara added that what’s different now is the public attention that elephant deaths receive in Sri Lanka compared to previous years, creating a sense of an unusually high number of deaths.
Elephant researcher and activist Sameera Weerathunga said remarks by government authorities can also fuel vigilante killings of elephants. The agriculture minister, Kuragamage Don Lalkantha, for example, defended farmers’ right to use any means to protect crops from wild animals. Lalkantha told Mongabay, however, that his comments didn’t refer to elephants, but to other crop-damaging wildlife like monkeys, wild boars and peacocks.
The environment minister, Dammika Patabendi, has also alluded to a pattern of elephants being deliberately shot in the legs. However, Weerathunga attributed the leg injuries to trap guns that are meant to target smaller game like wild boars and deer but can also injure elephants below their knees. Weerathunga said such statements without proper investigation can do more harm, distracting authorities from taking the actions needed to counter human-elephant conflict.
Devaka Weerakoon, an elephant researcher, added that human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka has often suffered from the spread of misinformation. “There are times that the media in Sri Lanka are not responsible in reporting, and even some of the experts that media tend to quote sometimes misrepresent the situation, shaping a negative public perception of conflict-causing animals,” he said.
Read the full story by Malaka Rodrigo here.
Banner image: Sri Lankan elephant at Wilpattu National Park. Image by Dinuka Kavinda via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
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