[Animal] Sri Lanka Launches Jumbo Initiative To Protect Tamed Elephants

[Cinderella 乡]

                                                                                                                                             https://www.arabnews.com/node/1917286/world

                                                                                                                               

 

 

Sri Lanka’s new animal protection laws, which ban riders from drinking on the job and require domesticated elephants to have photo identity cards with a DNA stamp, will keep a “check on animal cruelty” on the island nation, experts and officials told Arab News.
Under the upgraded measures, owners or anyone in the custody of domesticated elephants must ensure that the mahout or elephant rider has not “consumed any liquor or harmful drugs while employed,” according to the directive issued earlier this month.
Violators could face up to three years in prison and have their elephants seized by the government.
There are about 200 tamed elephants in Sri Lanka, highly revered and used in religious and cultural events throughout the year, while an estimated 7,500 roam in the wild across the island nation of 22 million people.
However, complaints of ill-treatment and cruelty of the endangered species are rampant, which officials are looking to curb with the latest measures.
“The new rules have been introduced to regularize the tamed elephant po[CENSORED]tion in the island,” Wimalaweera Dissanayake, state minister for wildlife protection, told Arab News.
“They are being implemented to keep a check on animal cruelty and to stop elephants from being stolen from the wild and brought up in sheltered homes,” he added.  
Capturing wild elephants in Sri Lanka is a criminal offense punishable by death, but prosecutions are rare.
The heavily poached pachyderms are prized across the country, where several affluent Sri Lankans, including Buddhist monks, keep them as pets.
Out of the 200 tamed elephants in Sri Lanka, Dissanayake said that nearly 100 are at homes, temples or used for work, while others are at the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage and the Elephant Transit Camp.
“All of these elephants are permanently stationed at these places, except for the animals at the transit camp where abandoned animals are bred and sent back to the wild,” Dissanayake said.
He added that the new laws would ensure owners provide better care for their elephants, which must be registered with biometric identity cards and receive medical checkups every six months.
“The ID cards include four photos, a DNA stamp and a microchip number with details of each elephant’s height, weight and unique characteristics,” Ashraff A. Samad, renowned photographer and journalist in the capital, Colombo, told Arab News.

“To my knowledge, elephant births only occur at the Pinnawela orphanage. Any claims of elephant births at individual homes cannot be accepted, and it is clear the baby elephants were stolen from the wild,” he added.
To avoid such crimes, the expert suggested that photos of registered elephants should be displayed on the Internet “so that their real owners can identify the stolen animals.”