COLOMBO (News 1st):- Rural Sri Lanka suffers day in and day out as a result of the human-elephant conflict. Every single day we become a witness of an unfortunate loss of life or property due to this conflict. The people who still continue to live through the fear of waking up to another traumatic day have for years on end pleaded with the officials for a remedy but was always left unanswered.

Certain areas that were provided with electric fences as a remedy didn’t take long to realize that this was only a short-lived solution. It all came down to the point where they were left alone with only their strength and courage to tackle these elephants.

Gammadda; an initiative that was launched by News 1st identified this issue as something that needed urgent attention. Thereby, our Gammadda teams will now begin to travel around the rural parts of Sri Lanka as we embark on another public service initiative to provide a long-lasting solution for the human-elephant conflict. The program that is launched in the form of a scientific study on the threat posed to people in certain areas due to elephants is a collaborative effort with the Department of Wildlife, the Civil Security Department and the University of Peradeniya.

The next two weeks will be spent in the midst of villagers who face near-death situations every day due to elephants. As part of this project, villages and forest lands in an around Sooriyawewa will be toured with the intention of understanding the depth of this problem and then developing potential solutions. This will add to the books of the Gammadda initiative as the latest rural development initiative which operates across more than 14,000 Grama Seva divisions in the country.

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