Video circulating since the death of the tusker Kavantissa shows a herd gathered at the Gatadivula–Kasikote elephant crossing in Galgamuwa, waiting by the roadside at a spot the tusker used to lead them across.
Several clips posted on social media show the elephants near the crossing, the Daily Mirror reported at 9.51 a.m. on Wednesday.
What Kavantissa used to do there
The crossing sits on the main road along the Anuradhapura–Colombo route, and the tusker’s role in getting the herd over it was a known local routine rather than an occasional sighting.
He would wait for vehicles to stop before crossing. A resident living near the Kasikote elephant tunnel helped halt traffic so the herd could pass. After crossing, Kavantissa was known for lifting his trunk towards the people who had stopped — a gesture familiar enough to those who saw it that it has become part of how he is remembered.
Since his death, according to the filing, the herd has been seen waiting at the crossing without the animal that used to lead the way.
A caution the newspaper itself prints
The Daily Mirror states plainly that the elephants’ behaviour alone does not establish why they are waiting, and that caution is worth carrying forward rather than editing out.
Elephants are long-lived, socially complex animals and the impulse to read grief or hesitation into the footage is strong. But a herd pausing at a road is also the ordinary behaviour of elephants at a road. What changed at this crossing is not only that a particular animal died — it is that the routine which got the herd across safely, involving a habituated tusker and a resident who stopped traffic, no longer runs. Nothing published establishes which of those the footage shows.
The crossing itself is an unresolved engineering problem
The site has a recent history that the footage sits on top of.
Construction of a wildlife tunnel beneath the railway line at Gatadivula–Kasikote began on 1 March 2024, part of an effort to reduce elephant–train collisions on the Mahawa–Omanthai railway rehabilitation route.
The tunnel has since drawn concern over whether its design can accommodate fully grown elephants. And it addresses only the railway. The main road beside it — the one Kavantissa used to stop traffic on — remains a danger to elephants moving between habitats, with no equivalent structure.
That is the practical point beneath the footage. A crossing that depended on one habituated tusker and one helpful resident was never infrastructure, and the infrastructure built nearby was built for a different hazard.
Not reported
The filing does not say when the clips were recorded, how many elephants are in the herd, who filmed them, or whether wildlife officers have been deployed to the crossing since the tusker’s death. It does not report whether the Department of Wildlife Conservation or the Road Development Authority plans any measure at the road crossing, or give the current status of the railway tunnel. No independent verification of the footage is reported, and no other verified newsroom had filed on it at the time of writing.
Kavantissa died on Friday 16 October after collapsing in a paddy field at Siyambalangamuwa Yaya 3, while being treated for a gunshot wound to his front right leg. Four separate inquiries into his death and treatment are now running, and the opposition is signing a motion for a parliamentary select committee.
