Elephants Breaking Fences

 



Elephants Breaking Fences

Electric fences, with an electric current (1 Hz), are being erected, for some time now, around forests and National Wildlife Parks where wild elephants live. They are made by joining wooden posts with metal wires. There is no danger whatever to life by this amount of electricity and the aim of erecting these electric fences is to prevent elephants crossing them. And also the same objective is achieved by cutting deep trenches at some places.

 

There are human abodes, cultivations and industries beyond these fences. When there is shortage of food for the elephants in areas in which they live and there are crops which they like grown in the farmlands beyond the elephant fences, they try to get in to the cultivations by demolishing the electric fences. Sometime their attempts are successful.

 

The main method used by the elephants to break the fences is to bring fairly large dry tree log from within the forest and place it on the fence to lower it. While one elephant presses it to the ground, others in the herd walk across. This is done in the night. They go in to villages, destroy cultivations and houses and feed on the food they like such as crops, stored paddy (rice) and salt. They go back in to the forest before sunrise lowering the fence as before unless they lose their way.

 

Here the most interesting fact is that when the elephants return to the forest the oldest elephant who is the leader of the herd takes the log used to lower the fence back in to the forest and hides it in the forest. It is done to use that log, that worked before, when breaking in to the village again. The electric fence gets destroyed when it is lower by putting the logs on it like this. If not it is lowered again by using the log. If the log has been misplaced another log will be brought and used when coming again.

 

Sometimes adult lone elephants also use this method and walk across the fence. Although very rare, another method is also used by lone elephants. That is breaking the fence and jump across in spite of the electricity. Elephants, breaking fences and jumping over them were reported from Sigiriya a few years back. Further there are reports of elephants getting in to villages swimming across reservoirs.

 

Next installment – A Short Introduction on Sri Lankan Elephants.

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