Sri Lanka human-elephant conflict kills hundreds o...

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• REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage SEARCH “KALUTHOTAGE SRI LANKA ELEPHANTS” FOR THIS STORY.
• REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage SEARCH “KALUTHOTAGE SRI LANKA ELEPHANTS” FOR THIS STORY.
• REUTERS/Thilina Kaluthotage SEARCH “KALUTHOTAGE SRI LANKA ELEPHANTS” FOR THIS STORY.

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GALGA MUWA, Sri Lanka: A wild elephant once wandered into wildlife officer Dewagiri Mudiyanselage Thilakaratne Bandara’s backyard to eat mangoes. The encounter left him with a broken leg and dislocated shoulder, while his wife lost her right leg after being trampled while rushing to help him.

Today, the couple’s lives have been transformed by an incident that reflects a growing crisis across Sri Lanka, where shrinking forests are forcing humans and wild elephants into increasingly dangerous encounters.

Bandara, 48, now helps care for his wife, Rathnayake Mudiyanselage Shirani Rathnayake, who uses a wheelchair and a prosthetic leg. The couple, who once worked together in their fields and shared daily household responsibilities, must now navigate a life shaped by physical injuries and emotional strain.

“Our lives are now completely different from before the elephant attack,” Bandara told Reuters. “My wife and I used to do everything together. We used to farm together.”

The tragedy is far from isolated. Since 2019, an average of 138 people have been killed annually in encounters with elephants in Sri Lanka, giving the country the world’s second-highest human death toll from such conflicts. Elephant deaths have averaged 402 a year over the same period, the highest figure globally.

The crisis is particularly acute around Galgamuwa, in the island’s northwest, where villages and agricultural land increasingly overlap with elephant habitats.

Shrinking forests bring elephants closer to homes

Bandara spends much of his working day maintaining a 14-kilometre electric fence along the Siyambalangamuwa reservoir. The barrier is intended to protect more than 2,000 nearby families from elephants living in the surrounding forest.

But the fence offers only limited protection when animals break through in search of food.

Bandara said the situation had changed dramatically over the past two decades as forests near the reservoir were cleared.

“When we were little, we had to go to a corner of the tank to see elephants. Now, in the nights, the elephants come to see us,” he said.