Trenches built to stop starving elephants eating from landfill
A massive trench is being dug around a landfill to stop a herd of starving elephants scavenging for food among the mounds of plastic waste.
The heartbreaking sight of elephants rummaging through the rubbish for vegetable scraps has shocked people all over the world.
Every day, dozens of elephants lumber out of the forest near the eastern town of Ampara in Sri Lanka.
Officials say they consume plastic along with the food scraps, which slowly kills them.
The Ampara landfill was created around a decade ago in the middle of an elephant corridor that is home to 200 to 300 elephants.
Electric fences have not worked to keep the determined animals away.
As global fury at the situation grows, the Sri Lankan government is now trying to dig a moat around the landfill to deter the animals.
Villagers who have had an uneasy co-existence with the wild herds, say the situation is only getting worse.
‘There is no proper plan or a system for this,’ says PH Kumara of the Gal Oya farmers union.
‘Government institutions have established landfills on the border of wildlife protection zones.
‘Once that is done, the wild elephants and other wild animals who eat the rubbish die.’
‘The wild elephants that come to the landfill hang around here day and night,’ he added.
‘Then they go into neighbouring villages and harm the villagers, their property and agricultural land.
‘The end result is that the human-elephant conflict gets worse and we lose elephants that are a national asset.’
There are around 7,500 wild elephants in Sri Lanka, which has a population of 22 million people.
Domesticated elephants are revered on the island but animal rights groups have criticised their treatment and use in religious and cultural events.
In 2019, a record 361 elephants died mainly because of humans, local environmental groups reported.
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