Sri Lanka: Saving Elephants by Helping People
 

Establishing orchards for sustainable livelihoods for villagers in areas of high human-elephant conflict.

People are important too.  We must address the needs and thus win the minds of those whose daily lives are often affected by elephants. This is a collaborative project with the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society.  We are providing alternative crops, together with important training, to help villagers in five communities achieve reliable incomes. 

These villages live in important elephant corridors, linking elephant habitats critical to seasonal migrations. The villagers have suffered greatly with human deaths and crops and livelihoods lost to rampaging elephants. In some cases, humans strike back, killing the elephants. 

Of course, we know that this occurs because humans have encroached on former elephant habitat.  Nonetheless, we cannot ignore the realities. Our goal is to increase villager tolerance of the elephants, reduce income lost to elephant crop-raiding, provide alternative means of income, and demonstrate to villagers that conservationists like ourselves do realize that the people are part of the environment as well.  If we care for and about these often marginalized villagers, they can achieve a modicum of financial stability and then have the luxury of caring for their elephants.

Please visit our Adopt-a-Village page for information on how you might help this project.