The
only real way to preserve elephants in the wild is to
preserve very large areas of land and set them aside as
nature preserves. The good news is that this is exactly
what is being done in a number of places. In many ways,
Sri Lanka is a model of what can be done. In fact, the
people there have a long tradition of wildlife
preservation. Two thousand years ago, the princes and
kings of Sri Lanka set aside hundreds of square
kilometers as hunting preserves. And ever since that
time, under one form of government or another, the
people of Sri Lanka have kept these areas from human
development. So, in effect, these area have served as a
nature preserves for two millennia!
National park land in modern
day Sri Lanka
In
fact, present day Sri Lanka has an extensive system of
national parks—many of them big enough to give us a
genuine sense of optimism about the preservation of wild
populations of elephants there. The lesson is that
wildlife conservation can be successful if enough people
express the will and commitment to do it. Wild
populations of Asian Elephants can, and will, be
preserved if we humans have the resolve to to preserve
large tracts of wild spaces like those in Sri Lanka.