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| Questions for you

• ON THE AVE. 30-40 PEOPLE ARE KILLED BY ELEPHANTS EACH YEAR.
  

• MORE MEN THAN WOMEN ARE KILLED
  

• MOST FATALITIES OCCUR AT NIGHT
  

• LONE ELEPHANTS (MALES) ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR FATALITIES
  

THE MAN-ELEPHANT CONFLICT

The fundamental cause of the problem is that due to development and expan-
sion of villages, man has encroached into elephant home ranges.
The population of Sri Lanka has grown from around 8 million in 1950,
to over 18 million in 1998. In the same period forest cover has dwindled from about 40% of the total land area to only 13-15%. The wild elephant population was about 10,000 in the 1950's and is now down to about only 3,500.

Poaching is not the major cause of elephant mortality in Sri Lanka, because tuskers are
very rare ( only some 6% of all males ). So ironically the lack of tusks is really a blessing
in disguise for the Sri Lankan elephant. The main cause of the problem is the due to elephants raiding farms and village hamlets, resulting in several flash-points of man-elephant conflict.