Elephant Conservation

Around 150 elephants and 50 people die every year as a result of the human elephant conflict in Sri Lanka. So what do you do? Put all the elephants in protected areas and fence them in? Unfortunately, the thousands of elephants living outside cannot be stuffed into a few protected areas. Therefore, we need to look for alternative strategies for elephant conservation.

Tracking Elephants

How do you study elephants? Elephants are huge, so surely are easy to find, observe and study? Unfortunately, that is far from the truth. An elephant can be as secretive and quiet as a mouse and just disappear into the forest like a ghost... Therefore, we are tracking elephants using new GPS collars.

Social Organisation

Asian elephants were thought to have a similar social organisation to African savannah elephants, with a very hierarchical complex social structure. However, our research suggests that Asian elephants have a very different social organisation.

Tsunami Impact on Natural Areas

The tsunami that impacted Sri Lanka on 26th December 2004 caused massive loss of human lives and extensive damage to our infrastructure. But what were its effects on natural eco-systems? Are natural systems resilient enough to take it in their stride? Can tsunamis be an important force in shaping coastal eco-systems? These are some of the questions we want to answer through our tsunami project.

Schools Program

Yala National Park is one of Sri Lanka's foremost conservation areas, but most school kids around Yala have never been to the park. They do not have any idea what conservation and nature appreciation is all about. How can they care about something that they never experienced an therefore don't know? That is what we are trying to change through our schools program.

Tree Hut Program

Watching from a tree hut as the red orb of the sun sinks into the horizon... the elephants slowly emerging from the forest edge to troop down to the water. Could life be better? Especially when it actually helps conserve elephants. With the tree hut program local people get some benefit from having elephants in their area.