The authorities have not released sufficient funds for the implementation of the National Action plan for Human Elephant Conflict migration recommended by the Presidential Committee in December 2020.
That Particular Committee was appointed by the former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in August 2020. Later as a result of a directive from President Ranil Wickremesinghe another Presidential Committee was appointed to facilitate and oversee the implementation of the National Plan for HEC mitigation in October 2022 consisting of 13 members headed by former Wildlife Conservation Director General Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya.
Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya told the Sunday Observer that the Committee has already met twice and scheduled to meet again on February 25, to review the progress.
‘’Unfortunately no action was taken by the Presidential Secretariat to implement the recommendations of the first committee until the second committee was appointed. Since then we have met on two occasions. The meeting in December was held on the field following a field visit in the Galgamuwa area to observe the functioning of community based village and seasonal paddy field electric fences that had been supported by the Centre for Conservation and Research as well as to discuss the effectiveness of such fences with the beneficiary communities.
Community based fencing is a new aspect and an integral part National Action Plan’’ Dr. Pilapitiya said.
He said that the intention of the second presidential committee and also the responsibility of it are to ensure the implementation of the full national action plan prepared by the first presidential committee that was chaired by Dr. Pritiviraj Fernando.
He said that the second committee would not try to ‘’reinvent the wheel’’ as there was an excellent NAP submitted in 2020 already.
Dr. Pilapitiya said: “We are, however, in need of funds to go on with the program. But no funds have been available for 2023. As such we are examining and exploring the possibility of getting some financial assistance from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank Funded Agriculture Sector Modernisation Project (ASMP) and the Climate Smart Irrigated Agriculture Project (CSIAP).
Pilapitiya said that it was impossible to do away with the human elephant conflict completely. The only way the human elephant conflict can be done away with was if there were either no humans or no elephants.
As long as there are humans and elephants sharing the same landscape there is potential for human elephant conflict. All we can do is to bring HEC down to a manageable level or reduce the conflict, he said.