Correct the Narrative: Sri Lanka’s Elephants Are Not the Enemy

By Jihan Hameed
THE NATIONALIST 🇱🇰

On 19 June 2025, the Sri Lanka Army’s Eastern Command alongside 7 SLA, 12 GW, 3(V) VIR, and officers of the Wildlife Department and Mahaweli Authority conducted a joint operation to drive 26 wild elephants from Mivithapura to Nuwaragala. The official statement describes this as a success in “preventing crop damage.”

This is not a misunderstanding. It is a systemic failure.
The elephants are not the threat.

The real threat is the destruction of their habitat by humans.

What the government calls a “human elephant conflict” is the inevitable result of long-term environmental mismanagement, deforestation, commercial land grabs, and encroachments on ancient elephant migration corridors. These elephants are not “straying” into villages. They are being pushed out of their last remaining territory forced into survival patterns we then punish them for.

This is not a crop issue. This is a conservation collapse.
Elephants are a sacred species in Sri Lanka majestic, intelligent, and deeply symbolic. They are globally endangered. Their numbers are in sharp decline, and the forests they once roamed are now fragmented by highways, fences, illegal development, and so-called “economic zones.”

Every time we militarize a response to these animals, we risk sending the wrong signal: that elephants are a threat to national security.

While Sri Lanka’s military is globally respected for its humanitarian operations, disaster response, and logistical excellence, wildlife conservation must be guided by environmental science not security logic. The armed forces have a vital role to play—but that role must be supportive, not dominant, and always coordinated within a civilian-led national strategy.
Where is that strategy?

• Where is the elephant conservation master plan?

• Where are the protected corridors, the reforestation programs, and the long-term habitat policies?

We must stop applauding reactive operations and start demanding real ecological reform.

This is not just a battle between villagers and elephants.
It’s a failure of statecraft that endangers both.

The rural poor live in fear. The elephants live in hunger. The only ones safe are the policymakers in air-conditioned rooms with no conservation vision and no accountability.
This is not just about preserving elephants.
It is about preserving the soul of Sri Lanka.

Our Demands:

1. A National Elephant Habitat Recovery Plan backed by science and budget
2. Immediate halt to deforestation and land development in known elephant corridors
3. A coordinated role for the military under a science-led national wildlife strategy
4. Community education and buffer zone strategies for coexistence
5. Restoration of dignity in how we speak about our animals not as pests, but as sacred life forms tied to our identity

We call on the Government of Sri Lanka to correct its narrative, correct its strategy, and correct its duty. This is not conservation. This is containment. And the world is watching.

The question is not: How do we chase the elephants away?

The question is: Why have we left them nowhere else to go?

THE NATIONALIST 🇱🇰