Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Environment is moving to formally gazette three new elephant corridors in a bid to mitigate the country’s worsening human-elephant conflict, Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody said on Tuesday.
The three planned corridors, according to NewsFirst, are:
- The route used by wild elephants travelling from the Hambantota Wild Elephant Management Reserve to Bundala
- The route from the Wadahitakanda Elephant Management Reserve to Udawalawe National Park
- The route via Hadapanagala to Demodara
All three are scheduled to be officially gazetted “in the near future,” the Deputy Minister said. Houses and cultivated paddy lands currently located within the corridor boundaries are also slated for removal — a step that has historically been the most politically contentious part of corridor designation, given the displacement and compensation questions it raises for affected farmers.
Sri Lanka recorded one of the world’s worst human-elephant conflicts in 2025, with hundreds of elephant and human deaths each year. A Court of Appeal ruling in May ordered the Department of Wildlife Conservation to maintain electric fences along key conflict zones, while recent fatalities have continued to underscore the stakes — including the May 28 death of an elephant trapped in a cultivation well in Medawachchiya and a father–daughter killed in a wild elephant attack in Wilgamuwa, Matale.
Corridor gazetting sits within a broader policy reset under the NPP administration, which has revoked earlier cabinet decisions permitting privately held domesticated elephants and signalled a shift toward stricter land-use planning for elephant range. The three new corridors, once gazetted, would add to a small national network that conservationists have long argued must be expanded if the country is to bring conflict losses down.
Source: NewsFirst.
