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For days, we met farmers as they prepared for the spring rice sowing season in central Sri Lanka. They told me and my Sri Lankan colleague Susitha Fernando about elephants trampling their crops, and how they tried to push them back with firecrackers and lit torches. They were losing their livelihoods — and sometimes their lives.
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Encounters between elephants and farmers have killed hundreds on both sides in recent years. Most of Sri Lanka’s 7,400 elephants live freely across the island, but conflict has ensued as their habitats are being converted to intensive agriculture in places where millions of people also live.
To meet some of the elephants, we drove through the Hurulu Eco Park in Sri Lanka’s Habarana district, where they graze freely in the confines of the park. After bouncing on dirt roads for an hour, we turned onto a path. A rainbow stretched across the sky, and an elephant ambled through it.
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I thought of what farmers told us: This conflict has two victims, because elephants are revered here. Under that rainbow, I felt that reverence too.
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