Wildlife Rangers in Polonnaruwa and Anuradhapura divisions yesterday told the Daily News that private landowners’ electric fences kill a significant number of elephants throughout the country every year.
These fences take in electricity from an electric energizer capacity of which no one can say or knows.
According to Wildlife rangers, elephants that come into contact with the fence wires face death due to the high voltage running through them.
“Local radio shop people have been manufacturing the electric fence energizers. Most of them do not even have voltage measuring equipment, “they pointed out, “ The voltage running through these cables are so high in some cases that even our equipment cannot measure it, “they said.
“The problem is that the fences do more than just dare the animal to breach the boundary; they kill it,” stated Wildlife Ranger R.M.Chandra Bandaranayaka of the Polonnaruwa Elahara, Nawala, and Dambulla area.
“Three elephants have already died this year as a result of these electric fences, which fail to satisfy any acceptable threshold for defence against encroaching animals,” he said.
“The people buy this equipment from village radio repair shops for a price of about Rs.20 000. These products offer no warranty to the buyer. It can cause electric shocks to the animals as well as humans and cause death to them, “he said.
Wildlife officers have arrested two farmland owners from Tirappane and Bakamune on Thursday over the deaths of three elephants due to electric shocks from such fences.
The accused in Bakamune was released on personal bail of Rs.200,000 yesterday.
When asked why the department of wildlife cannot introduce standard electric fence energizers for those who want them on their boundaries so that elephants are not electrocuted, Bandaranayaka said that the instances in question have been forwarded to Moratuwa University for voltage recommendations.
COURTESY DAILYNEWS
