FEATURED SUCCESS STORY

Effective and Modern Solution for Human Elephant Conflict

Dr. Nuwan Kuruwitaarachchi, a Senior Lecturer at University of Sri Jayewardenepura and team of researchers at Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology worked together to find Effective and Modern Solution for Human Elephant Conflict. This study started with researching on existing solutions. Many solutions have introduced throughout the decades to mitigate this rising socio-economic issue, but still, it remains as an unresolved problem.  Electric fence is the most prominent solution which is currently used in Sri Lanka. Electric fence will create an ecological boundary between humans and elephants. Since elephants are not in in-situ, it is difficult to cover the whole area by elephant fences and maintain electric fences. Thus, these researchers developed a low cost and more accurate system planned place near elephant passes. This system consists of 3 main parts. A detection system, which used to detect invading elephants. An elephant repelling system which used to repel elephants and a human alerting system which activates and alert humans when elephant repelling system failed repel elephants. Presently. this project is under more accurate testing and verifications stage with a research team of Faculty of Technology, University of Sri Jayewardenepura and a testing platform is under construction at Habarana in Anuradhapura District for this purpose with the help of villages and entrepreneurs of the area.