Sri Lanka returns orphaned elephants to the jungle

Sri Lanka returns orphaned elephants to the jungle

by AFP Staff Writers

Colombo (AFP) July 17, 2025

Sri Lankan authorities returned six orphaned and injured elephants to the wild on Thursday after nursing them back to health under a long-running conservation project, officials said.

Two females and four males, aged between five and seven, were released into the Mau Ara forest within the Udawalawe Wildlife Sanctuary, environment minister Dammika Patabendi told AFP.

He said it was the 26th such release of rehabilitated elephants since the Udawalawe Elephant Transit Home began its programme in 1998.

“We hope, in the interest of conserving elephants, we will be able to improve facilities at this transit home in the near future,” Patabendi said.

The calves were transported in trucks and then allowed to walk free because they were deemed strong enough to fend for themselves or join wild herds.

Baby elephants have minimal contact with humans at the transit home to ease their integration into wild herds.

All elephants at the facility were rescued after being found abandoned, injured or separated from their herds.

Udawalawe, about 210 kilometres (130 miles) southeast of Colombo, is renowned for its wild elephants and is a major tourist attraction.

Sri Lankan authorities believe the transit home’s strategy of rewilding rescued elephants, rather than domesticating them, has paid off.

The centre’s director, Malaka Abeywardana, said 57 elephants remain at the facility, which has released 187 back into the wild since the first release in early 1998.

Sri Lanka had previously sent rescued calves to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage, which has also become a popular tourist site.

The Pinnawala orphanage marked its golden jubilee in February.

Conservation efforts have become increasingly urgent due to growing conflict between wild elephants and farmers.

The human-elephant conflict has resulted in the deaths of around 400 elephants and 200 people annually over the past five years.

Dogs on the trail of South Africa’s endangered tortoises
Boland, Afrique Du Sud (AFP) July 18, 2025 –
Snout pressed to the ground, a border collie named Delta zigzagged through the shrubs on a private nature reserve near Cape Town, frantically sniffing for critically endangered tortoises.

The dog stopped abruptly in front of a small bush and lay down, signalling a find as Delta’s handler moved in to search the surrounding area.

Hidden in the tall grass was a tiny reptile, its shell marked with yellow star-like patterns — a clear sign it was a geometric tortoise, a species found only at the southern tip of Africa.

“It’s an adult female, you can tell by its flat belly,” said Esther Matthew, the dog’s handler and a conservation officer for South Africa’s Endangered Wildlife Trust.

She explained that the organisation uses canines to sniff out the endangered species by “building positive association with the tortoises’ odour”, throwing Delta a foam frisbee as a reward.

Dogs are five times more effective than humans at this type of search and “also help us find the smaller tortoises which are often overlooked, the hatchlings and the juveniles”, Matthew said.

“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of finds with the dogs.”

– Shrinking numbers –

Their help has become crucial in studying and protecting the geometric tortoise, found only in South Africa’s Western Cape province and on the verge of extinction.

The species’ population was already as low as 1,500 individuals in the wild in the early 1990s, according to biologist Andrew Turner, who works for the conservation authority Cape Nature.

It is now estimated at only several hundred animals with “declines pretty much across the entire remaining range of this species”, he told AFP.

On the nature reserve, Delta and Matthew — helped by colleagues searching the bushes with sticks — found a dozen of the hardy reptiles.

“We record all the tortoises we can find, all the data, measurements and weight,” Delta’s handler explained.

– ‘Creating corridors’ –

With the species’ natural habitat shrinking due to agriculture and urban expansion, these surveys have become all the more critical, Turner said.

“There are very few places left in the Western Cape that still support these tortoises. It’s really just a couple of nature reserves and pieces of good habitat left on people’s private property,” he added.

“The remaining patches of vegetation are not really connected to each other anymore. There are farmlands in between, roads, towns and industries so there is limited ability for the tortoises to disperse and rescue other populations.”

This fragmentation makes them all the more vulnerable to droughts, predation and fires, which scientists argue have become more frequent and intense thanks to climate change.

Poaching — of the tortoises and the plants they feed on — is also a threat, Turner said.

“They are down to such small levels that they actually need as much assistance as they can get,” he said.

To save the species, the Endangered Wildlife Trust has looked at building “partnerships” with landowners and communities living in the animals’ habitat.

“The biggest thing is… creating corridors where species can work through,” explained Zanne Brink, who leads the organisation’s dry lands conservation programme.

“Our biggest challenge is to get enough information to prevent critical biodiversity areas from being lost to unsustainable land use.”

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