Eight people, including a wildlife protection official, have been charged in Sri Lanka in the first court case for trafficking elephants on the South Asian island, the prosecutor’s office said on Tuesday.
Owning a baby elephant was a symbol of prestige for wealthy Sri Lankans under the country’s previous government, but the practice has been banned since the alternation in 2015. Experts estimate that about 40 elephants were thus removed from their herd over a decade, each of which sold for about $125,000.
Eight men have been charged with capturing and detained five elephants in 2014-15, in violation of wildlife laws, prosecutor Nishara Jayaratne said. They face up to 20 years in prison. The case “is the first elephant trafficking case in our judicial history,” she told AFP. Among the suspects is a deputy director of the wildlife conservation department, who allegedly falsified documents to allow the other seven men to illegally keep illegally captured elephants in natural parks.
The trafficking of elephants is blamed for the decline of the population of this pachyderm in Sri Lanka, poachers often having to kill the mother to seize her cub. The population of wild elephants on the island is estimated at 7,500 head. Clashes between humans and wild elephants have led to the deaths of 375 people in the country over the past five years, according to official figures. During the same period, angry villagers killed nearly 1,200 animals.
According to wildlife experts, a large number of elephants die from explosives hidden in hay used as bait by locals to hunt other animals, such as wild boar. When chewed, these explosives detonate and seriously injure the animals, which perish slowly and painfully. 64 Sri Lankan elephants died of “jaw breakers” last year, and 53 were shot dead, according to the US website Mongabay.
