Allocation of forest reserve land for farming will worsen human-elephant conflict

President Anura Kumara Disanayake who addressed the Monaragala District Special Coordinating Committee recently assured farmers who were in attendance that the Government would expedite the grant of five acres per family in the Wattegama-Kebilitta Forest Reserve’s reservation areas while also stating that some of the land would be allocated for some major projects.   

This was in response to the plea by the farmers to the President to intervene to solve their problems as they had lost cultivation lands due to boundary demarcations of the Wattegama-Kebilitta Reserve. This prompted the President to instruct officials to establish a structured mechanism to resolve such land-related issues of farmers.

The area which is under consideration for allocation to farmers is an area of around 9,960 hectares. There are around 3,911 farmer families who were promised 5 acres each, but that has been put on hold due to concerns by environmentalists and legal hurdles.

The President said that once five acres each is allocated to the 3,000 odd farmers, there will be around 3,000 hectares of land that will be left over, and this will be handed over on a long-term lease basis.

However, the decision to allow farming on reservation areas particularly in an area where the human-elephant conflict is at its worst is a serious cause for concern for both environmentalists and those concerned with the fast-dwindling forest cover in the country.

They say that allocating this land would be a total neglect of the warnings by experts about the worsening human-elephant conflict in the country and the tragic plight of the wildlife in Sri Lanka.

The Centre for Environmental Justice (CEJ) filed a case in 2022 seeking to address the critical issues concerning the Wattegama-Kebilitta Forest Reserve situated in the Monaragala District. The Centre claims that nearly 37,500 hectares of the Kabilitta Forest Reserve has already been lost to deforestation.

The primary objectives of initiating this legal action was to enforce the law by prosecuting individuals involved in illegal activities, including unauthorised clearing and farming within the Kebilitta Reserve and obtain protection and assistance for reforestation efforts and hold officials accountable for their perceived failure to perform statutory duties in safeguarding the forest reserve.

This forest reserve is a major catchment area for many water sources including the Vila Oya and the Kumbukkan Oya and has an inter-monsoonal rainforest cover that provides a habitat for wildlife including elephants. This forest, which connects the Yala National Park and the Kumbukkana Forest Reserve has been under the control of the Forest Department since the enactment of the Forest Conservation Ordinance.

However, with the President’s assurances to allocate this land not only for farming families but also bigger projects, there are questions as to how serious the Government is in its plans to mitigate the human-elephant conflict.

It’s a well-known fact that the root cause for the human-elephant conflict is deforestation and the fast-shrinking space for wildlife.

The Government came to power promising scientific approaches to issues such as deforestation and the human-elephant conflict with a boast of having many experts on its side to advise but given the manner in which plans are afoot to allocate land in this manner, the credibility of such experts is highly questionable.

Sri Lanka’s forest cover has disappeared at a rapid rate mainly due to so-called mega projects done in the past. Unfortunately, the current Government too is taking the same path with scant attention for the long-term impact of deforestation.