Four hundred and fifty-five wild elephants died in Sri Lanka during 2025, Parliament has been told — an increase of 67 on the 388 recorded in 2024.
The figures were contained in a document tabled by Environment Minister Dhammika Patabendi in response to a question from MP L. M. Abeywickrama, the Daily Mirror reported at 3.36 p.m. on Wednesday.
The same document records that elephants killed 160 people in 2025 and injured a further 221.
What the number means against the population
This desk reported in June that a nationwide survey put Sri Lanka’s wild elephant population at 7,451 animals in 2024 — a figure given by the same minister.
Set against that count, the 455 deaths of 2025 represent about 6.1 percent of the national herd in a single year, or roughly one elephant in every sixteen. The year-on-year rise is 17.3 percent.
The toll also runs at about 2.8 elephant deaths for every person killed by an elephant.
2026 is tracking below both years
The trajectory is not simply upward, and the archive makes that visible.
Sri Lanka recorded 108 wild elephant deaths in the first four months of 2026 and 128 by the middle of May. Those partial figures imply a monthly rate of roughly 28, against 32 a month in 2024 and 38 a month in 2025.
Annualised crudely, 2026 would land somewhere near 340 — below both of the years now tabled. That projection carries a real caveat: human-elephant conflict is seasonal, driven by crop cycles and dry-season movement, so a January-to-May rate need not hold across a full year. But on the evidence published so far, the 2025 figure looks like a peak rather than the current run-rate, and no filing this week has said so.
A definitional question the filing leaves open
The Daily Mirror’s report says 455 elephants were “killed.” Earlier parliamentary releases covered by this desk used the term “deaths,” which ordinarily includes animals that died of natural causes, disease and age alongside those shot, electrocuted, poisoned, struck by trains or killed by hakka patas jaw bombs.
The filing carries no breakdown by cause, so it is not possible to say from it how many of the 455 were deliberate killings. The two words are not interchangeable and the distinction matters to every policy conclusion that might be drawn from the number.
The fencing figures do not divide
The tabled document also states that the total length of electric fencing erected stands at 5,787.89 km, and that Rs. 618.89 million was spent on fence erection in 2025.
These two numbers should not be divided into each other. The length reads as a cumulative national total built up over many years, while the money is a single year’s spending; dividing them would produce a misleading cost-per-kilometre. The filing does not say how many kilometres the 2025 money actually bought, which is the figure that would show whether the programme is expanding or merely being maintained.
Why these numbers land this week
The data arrives five days after the death of the tusker Kavantissa at Siyambalangamuwa in Galgamuwa, which has dominated wildlife coverage. A presidential expert committee held its first meeting on Wednesday, and the opposition has called for a parliamentary select committee.
The 455 figure is 2025 data and does not include Kavantissa. Its significance is that it sets the scale: the animal whose death prompted a presidential committee was one of hundreds lost each year, most of which are never reported individually.
Not reported
The filing gives no breakdown of elephant deaths by cause, no district distribution, and no comparison with years before 2024. It does not state how many kilometres of fencing were built in 2025, how much of the existing 5,787.89 km is functional, or what compensation was paid to the families of the 160 people killed. The Daily Mirror item is the only filing this desk located on the tabled document at the time of writing; neither Ada Derana, whose site has returned a CloudFront block to this desk for more than a month, nor NewsFirst or Hiru had carried it.