For the first time in South Asia, one of the world’s leading travel agencies, TUI of Germany has teamed up with the Centre for Conservation and Research (CCR), and Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts to launch a novel method to mitigate the human-elephant conflict in Habarana.
Under the project titled ‘Live and Let Live’, mobile elephant electric fencing which could be shifted from place to place would be installed. The fences will be entirely powered by solar energy.
The total investment on the project is around Rs. 20 million.
This project strives to assist people of Badi Wewa in Habarana to protect their crops from wild elephants that frequent the area – often causing heavy damage to paddy and other crops.
Village fences will also be erected to keep villagers safe around their living areas and homes as elephants often come in search of harvested crops and cause damage to houses.
The Versatile Paddy Field fences are easy to erect and the farmers are taught how to make these by the CCR and Cinnamon Nature Trails teams.
The fences stay up until the harvest is taken, and farmers can then remove them and re-erect them for the next crop season.
The massive human elephant conflict has now climbed to a high level, taking over 70 human lives and 400 elephant deaths annually making Sri Lanka the highest conflict casualty country in the world.
With this project, the team hopes to minimise the destruction of crops by 50% and also diversify crops by the use of abandoned farmland due to elephant crop raiding.
The project will be implemented under the guidance of Chairman, Trustee and Scientist at the Centre for Conservation and Research, Dr. Prithviraj Fernando and his team is carrying out the work at this selected village.
Former speaker Karu Jayasuriya who first introduced TUI to this project was the chief guest.