Sri Lanka's elephants are dying faster than at any point on record.
And the plan that was bringing the deaths down got shelved.
438
Elephants killed in 2025, the worst year on record
158
People killed in 2025
3,484
Elephant deaths, 2015–2024
<100
Tuskers left in the whole country
Sri Lanka is home to one of the densest wild elephant populations in Asia, somewhere between 5,000 and 6,000 animals, most of them living outside protected areas, in landscapes people also farm, build roads through and raise families in. That closeness produces some of the most extraordinary wildlife encounters anywhere in the world. It also produces one of the deadliest human-wildlife conflicts on the planet. Zoom out and the picture doesn't improve. By 12 August 2026, the toll for this year already stood at around 180 elephants, on pace to challenge last year's record.
THE ANIMAL AT THE CENTRE OF IT
Sri Lanka's tuskers, the males that carry the ivory the species is known for, are close to disappearing. Fewer than 100 remain, by some estimates as few as 50 or 60. Around 60 have been killed in the past decade alone, a devastating loss for a trait already carried by fewer than 7% of Sri Lankan males.
Deegadanthu. Koliya. Unicorn. Bathiya. Mahasilu.
Named animals, shot, electrocuted or otherwise killed between 2024 and 2025. Not statistics.
WHY THIS IS HAPPENING
The common assumption is that elephants wander into villages that were never theirs. GPS-collar data on nearly 200 wild elephants, the largest dataset of its kind anywhere, tells a different story. Each elephant spends its entire life inside a home range averaging around 200 km². It's born there. It lives there. It dies there.
When a road, an irrigation scheme or a fence line cuts through that range, the elephant doesn't relocate. It has lost half of what was always its own territory, and it goes looking for the other half. Usually that search ends at the nearest farm or village.
A PLAN THAT WAS ALREADY WORKING
Sri Lanka doesn't need to invent a solution. It already wrote one. In 2021, a committee of the country's own leading scientists, chaired by Dr Prithiviraj Fernando and appointed by the President the year before, delivered a National Action Plan for human-elephant conflict after reviewing sixty years of failed policy. Their central finding was blunt: trying to confine elephants to protected areas "is unlikely to succeed and will cause conflict escalation. It will also decimate elephant herds."
The plan called for:
Electric fencing around villages and farms, not around elephants
A phased end to elephant drives, once properly evaluated
Better compensation for farmers who lose crops, property or family members
A requirement that new roads, irrigation schemes and settlements account for elephant movement before they're built
It took until 2023 for the plan to properly launch. Even partial implementation showed results within a year: elephant deaths fell from 488 in 2023 to 386 in 2024, the first drop in almost a decade.
Then the government changed in September 2024. Implementation stopped. Elephant drives resumed. Trenches went back up around protected areas. By July 2025, more than 13,000 firearms had reportedly been issued to or held by farmers for crop protection, and only 5,000 of them were formally licensed. Deaths climbed straight back up to the 2025 record.
WHERE THINGS STAND RIGHT NOW
A new parliamentary committee, chaired by Environment Minister Dr Dhammika Patabendi, met on 5 August 2026 to decide what replaces the shelved plan. Its stated reason for starting again rather than reviving the 2020 plan is that migration patterns and land use have shifted since it was written. Elephant biology hasn't.
One item on that committee's agenda is "clearing elephant corridors." That phrase could mean two very different things: removing the human encroachment that blocks a corridor, or stripping the natural cover elephants rely on to move through it safely. The government hasn't said which. Clear the wrong thing and you strip elephants of the last routes between the habitat fragments they have left.
The timing makes this worse. A strong El Niño is already active and forecast to peak between October and December 2026, with a second severe dry spell expected from February to April 2027. Water in hundreds of small agricultural tanks has already dropped to around 10% of capacity in places, and temperatures have reached 37.5°C in some districts. As dry-zone habitats empty out, elephants go looking for water wherever they can find it, increasingly meaning village wells and water trucks. Sri Lanka's own Special Cabinet Sub-Committee on El Niño preparedness discussed "steps that could be taken to ensure adequate water supplies for wildlife in protected areas" at a meeting chaired by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on 21 August 2026. What those steps actually are hasn't been said yet.
NOT A STORY WITH ONE VILLAIN
This conflict has two sets of victims, and losing sight of either one distorts the story. Farmers guard their fields from stick-and-rope watchtowers that blow down in the first storm of the season. Losing a crop can mean losing a year's income. Some, out of desperation, turn to hakka patas, explosives hidden in food that kill elephants in prolonged agony. The plan that worked in 2024 protected farmers and elephants at the same time, by fencing farmland instead of trying to fence thousands of wild elephants into parks that were never big enough to hold them.
WHY NOW
Sri Lanka's government is mid-decision. The plan it needs already exists, was written by its own scientists, and produced a measurable drop in deaths the one time it was properly funded. What happens next depends on whether that evidence gets a hearing, or gets rebranded and set aside again.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Three named people are deciding this right now. It takes thirty seconds to tell them what the evidence actually shows.