Elephant Orphanage & Elephant Lore: Dilmah Initiative at Uda Walawe-by Kamanthi Wickramasinghe

Kamanthi Wickramasinghe, in Daily Mirror, 25 March 2024, where the title reads thus: “Üda Walawe ETH: A home away from home for baby elephants”

Spectators witnessing another busy feeding hour at the Uda Walawe ETH —Pix courtesy: Dilmah ConservationhInauguration of ‘Elephant Knowledge Walk’ In a bid to spread more awareness among visitors to the Uda Walawe ETH, Dilmah Conservation in collaboration with the Department of Wildlife Conservation renovated the ‘Elephant Knowledge Walk’ to educate local and international visitors on why the Asian elephant needs to be protected. Apart from that a souvenir shop was also opened to support local communities.

The Uda Walawe ETH was set up to rehabilitate elephants that were orphaned due to various reasons including the Human-Elephant Conflict. At the ETH, elephant calves have very little contact with humans which is vital to boost their chances of survival in the wild. Here, human interaction is only limited to feeding hours. The calves are being fed every three hours with infant milk but also encouraged to develop natural foraging habits including grazing.

An occasional trumpeting indicated that some calves were protesting for more milk. The keepers and the staff have dedicated their time and effort to discipline the one or two mischievous calves. “It costs around Rs. 250,000 per day to provide milk for these elephants,” said Dr. Malaka Abeywardena, Officer-in-Charge at the Uda Walawe ETH.

“They are being fed around six times a day. But one of the challenges that we face is when we reintroduce them to the wild. There are threats in each national park as they are isolated areas. One of the biggest threats they face is the new environment.
Since they have habituated themselves with humans they tend to move towards human settlements. We don’t have a better environment to release them.”

The Uda Walawe ETH is currently home to a herd of 58 elephants and each one of them is being well looked after. “We treat calves which are below seven years of age. We cannot treat elephants older than that as we have limited facilities. But even amidst financial and other challenges we hope to do our best to conserve elephants in the country,” Dr. Abeywardena added.

“It costs around Rs. 250,000 per day to provide milk for these elephants,”– Dr. Malaka Abeywardena

Inauguration of ‘Elephant Knowledge Walk’

In a bid to spread more awareness among visitors to the Uda Walawe ETH, Dilmah Conservation in collaboration with the Department of Wildlife Conservation renovated the ‘Elephant Knowledge Walk’ to educate local and international visitors on why the Asian elephant needs to be protected. Apart from that a souvenir shop was also opened to support local communities.

Chairman, Dilmah Ceylon Tea Company PLC Dilhan C. Fernando addressing the gathering at the launch said that elephants are very important. They are ecosystem engineers, keystone species, charismatic and beautiful animals. But today it is more about nature and what we need to understand is that in our value-driven economy, we sometimes marginalize some of the most important things such as land, water and animals. Elephants are part of the ecosystem that keeps us alive. What is important is to understand the reality. While we have built an economy that has an unconscious bias against nature, we also need to realize the value of elephants and a lot of their species. The nearest estimate is that in a lifetime a single elephant can add around USD 1.6 million to the economy. This is in terms of tourism, benefits of restoration of ecosystems and so on. The reason why Dilmah got involved here is that my father established the business and we recognized that with tea we have an enduring connection with nature. In order to ensure that we interact sustainably with nature it is as important as the work we do in selling our tea. Today we’re here to honor that association. There are unborn generations who can’t think. What we do today will decide whether they have sustainable lives or lives of unspeakable hardships with the collapse of ecosystem services. It’s about nature, life, civilization and the future.”

Opening of Elephant Knowledge Walk Biodiversity conservation as a development priority“We in Sri Lanka always look at development to be the priority of this country,” said senior elephant researcher and former Director General at the Department of Wildlife Conservation Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya. “But this development should be sustainable. If development is not sustainable we have not achieved anything. We have to study what makes development sustainable. This is where Sri Lanka is failing. For development, there’s what is called ecosystem services necessary for development. These include services such as the availability of water, good weather, fertile soil, carbon sequestration and so on. Without these services there cannot be any kind of development because development has its own basic needs. So how do we ensure that we have enough ecosystem services for sustainable development? Studies done worldwide have shown a direct linkage between ecosystem services and development.e HEC is threatening the future of elephants in this country and it is a serious problem for humans too. The only way I could see the HEC easing in this country is when people particularly those in areas and sharing landscapes with elephants consider the giants as economic benefits. At this point, an elephant is only an economic liability to people living in areas in the

Elephants are very important. They are ecosystem engineers, keystone species, charismatic and beautiful animals. But today it is more about nature and what we need to understand is that in our value-driven economy, we sometimes marginalize some of the most important things such as land, water and animals — -Dilhan C. Fernando

A NOTE: I have had enormous problems in placing this item in THuppahi

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Elephant Orphanage & Elephant Lore: Dilmah Initiative at Uda Walawe-by Kamanthi Wickramasinghe

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