For days, we met farmers as they ready for the spring rice sowing season in central Sri Lanka. They informed me and my Sri Lankan colleague Susitha Fernando about elephants trampling their crops, and the way they tried to push them again with firecrackers and lit torches. They have been dropping their livelihoods — and typically their lives.
Encounters between elephants and farmers have killed tons of on each side lately. Most of Sri Lanka’s 7,400 elephants dwell freely throughout the island, however battle has ensued as their habitats are being transformed to intensive agriculture in locations the place tens of millions of individuals additionally dwell.
To fulfill a number of the elephants, we drove by means of the Hurulu Eco Park in Sri Lanka’s Habarana district, the place they graze freely within the confines of the park. After bouncing on grime roads for an hour, we turned onto a path. A rainbow stretched throughout the sky, and an elephant ambled by means of it.
I considered what farmers informed us: This battle has two victims, as a result of elephants are revered right here. Beneath that rainbow, I felt that reverence too.
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