Eighty-four new single-cab vehicles were formally handed over to the Department of Wildlife Conservation on Friday morning, in what the Environment Ministry describes as the largest consignment of vehicles ever given to the department at one time.
The handover took place at the Toyota Lanka premises in Mahara-Kadawatha, with Environment Minister Dr Dhammika Patabendi and Deputy Environment Minister Anton Jayakody presiding, Hiru News reported.
The ministry said the programme has three stated aims: protecting the country’s wildlife resources, finding solutions to human-elephant conflict, and making the department’s field operations more efficient.
Where the vehicles go
Distribution will give priority to range offices in areas where human-elephant conflict is frequent and where forest damage is most often reported, the ministry said. It expects the vehicles to reduce the transport difficulties field officers face and to improve response times on emergency wildlife call-outs.
The ministry said several earlier consignments of vehicles have already been issued to range offices under a programme aimed at easing long-standing shortages of human and physical resources in the wildlife sector.
The fleet, and what the numbers imply
The department’s total vehicle fleet now stands at 294, made up of:
| Type | Number |
|---|---|
| Single cabs | 84 |
| Double cabs | 16 |
| Crew cabs | 3 |
| Motorcycles | 181 |
| Tractors | 9 |
| Hand tractor | 1 |
Those figures sum exactly to 294, and the single-cab line is exactly the number handed over on Friday. On the face of the filing, that means the 294 total is the fleet after today’s delivery, and that the department previously held no single cabs at all — a fleet of 210 vehicles, of which 181 were motorcycles.
The filing does not state this directly, and the inference should be treated with care: it is possible the ministry is counting only the new vehicles in that line. But no older single cabs appear anywhere in the breakdown.
Context
The department has been under visible strain. It recorded 289 elephant deaths in October alone, and its officers have been drawn into joint operations with the tri-forces on elephant protection. Its director general has publicly discussed elephant density pressures.
A note on sourcing
This report carries a single source. A sweep of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst and EconomyNext rails at the time of writing found no other verified newsroom carrying the handover.
Not reported
The filing does not give the cost of the vehicles, the funding source, the procurement route, or whether the supplier was selected by tender. It does not say how many range offices will receive vehicles, how the allocation between offices is decided, or over what period distribution will take place. It does not name the vehicle model, and it gives no figure for how many vehicles the department says it still needs.