Jumbo census in August, September

Indian Wildlife Institute support sought:

An islandwide elephant census is to be conducted for the first time in August and September this year, a Wildlife Conservation Department official told the Daily News yesterday.

She said that the support of Asian elephant experts of the Indian Wildlife Institute will be taken to conduct the census. They have confirmed their attendance. The approaching drought season was chosen for the census since the census will be based on water holes to avoid double counting.

She noted that 228 elephant deaths were reported last year while 81 people had died from the human-elephant conflict. She said that management decision to minimize human-elephant conflict would be taken depending on the statistics of the census. The official said that even though censuses on elephants were conducted in the past, none are complete and does not contain a full record of data.

She said the first survey on Sri Lankan elephants was reported in 1963 where 1,500 elephants were counted by a foreigner named Noris. Another survey was carried out in 1969 by George Macay and 2,200 elephants were counted during this survey. "However we cannot assure the reliability of these statistics since they were conducted by foreigners. The Wildlife Department carried out a census in 1992 except in the Northern and Eastern Provinces and found out an elephant population of 4,500," the official said.

"Then in 2004, another census was held only in the North-West Wildlife Zone in which 1,076 elephants were recorded. In a census conducted in the Mahaweli region in 2008, around 2,149 elephants were counted.

This time we hope to conduct a complete census and maintain a full report on its statistics," she said. DM