EPISODE 16 – Elephant Transit Home -Udawalawa

Among the happy memories

I came to Udawalawe Elephant Sanctuary in 1999. Prior to that, I had the experience of working in the Elephant Transit Home from time to time for acting the service of Dr. Vijitha, the former Veterinary Surgeon in charge when he was on leave. There is a scientific opinion that wild elephants and humans cannot live together. But because we are a human race that has been with the environment since ancient times, elephants and humans live together at the Elephant Transit Home.

I was much enthusiastic to work in the Elephants Transit Home. Conserving elephants is not an easy task with the growing population of a small island like ours. What usually happens is that when the human-elephant conflict escalates, the elephants are chased away and driven back into the wild or anesthetized and put into the wild. Doing so can sometimes cause the calves to get lost. The Udawalawe Elephant Sanctuary was established in 1995 to properly conserve these baby elephants.

In 1997 there was an operation to drive elephants from Handapanagala to Yala National Park. At the end of the operation, a village buffalo herdsman called Madda had informed Wildlife Guard L. B Anura about a female baby elephant with his herd of buffaloes. Accordingly, Wildlife Assistant Conservation Mr. Mansoor, and Wildlife Guards, Mr. L.B Anura and Mr. KarunasenaSamaranayake, and the Driver Mr. Kamal Jasmine went there and put the baby elephant in a DWC jeep and brought it to the elephant shelter. She is nicknamed ‘Sandamali’ as she is found in Handapanagala.

I first met the group of elephants including Sandamali when I came to work in the Elephant Sanctuary. Sandamali loves her younger baby elephants very much. She showed genuine affection to those who lost their mothers. It was a common sight to see the youngest baby elephants lying next to Sandamali, licking her earlobes. She was like a mother or an older sister to those calves.

When we go to treat the little ones, the first thing we have to do is drive the Sandamali away. The Sandamali should be driven away to audible distance or if the treated calf feels pain and make trumpet sound, Sandamali will come running. She protests with a “guru guru” tone. She tries to get the baby under her belly. Sandamali was really like the leader of the group and took her team of baby elephants across the Elephant Transit Home tank field with her friend Mattali, the baby elephant.

Elephant calves are released into the wild every few years. In July 2000, the then Director of Wildlife, A.P.A. Gunasekera and Nandana Atapattu, Head of the Veterinary Division, the founder of the Elephant Sanctuary, led the team to release the baby elephants in the Boraluwewa area in Udawalawe. In this group there were baby elephants called Sandamali, Mattali, Komali and Emily and male elephant calves called Isuru. There we put radio collars on Sandamali, Komali and Isuru to make it easy to find them. When released, the baby elephants join other herds. When joining these elephant herds, the leadership qualities of Sandamali and Mattali and the bond between them became clearer.

Often the females in the herds do not like the members coming from outside. We could see that Sandamali would come forward if the cubs in her group were being harassed. Our follow-up continued. We saw the group including Sandamali mixing well with the wild elephants in Udawalawe National Park. Except for Komali, everyone else was in the same group. Three years after the release of the baby elephant group, we removed the radio collars of the elephants. But it was not difficult for us to find them as we had confirmed the location of the Sandamali and the group.

When Sandamali was 13 years old, we saw that she was pregnant. We were curious because of her younger age. But on the morning of a day in April 2008, we saw a group including Sandamali in the teak among mana bushes beyond the teak fence of the Udawalawe National Park.

As we got closer to them, we saw a baby elephant sucking milk from the Sandamali. Her friend Mattali was also nearby. We waited for about 15 minutes until they disappeared in the mana bushes.

That scene excited us. Our cameras were filled with pictures of the group including Sandamali. That was the most satisfying sight I have ever seen during my career in the field of wildlife conservation.