By Sri Lanka is nowhere close to resolving the human-elephant conflict and driving away elephants with elephant crackers seems to be the most common practice to safeguard villagers and their crops.
The Wildlife Department has to spend Rs. 2,800 million annually to provide crackers free of charge to the villagers and villagers are complaining that due to the current financial crisis they don’t get sufficient elephant crackers to protect themselves.
Free crackers to repel wild elephants to safeguard the villages in the vulnerable areas when the beasts invade the farmlands and villages. Minister, Mahinda Amaraweera said that about 1.4 million elephant crackers are purchased from local cracker manufacturers.
