THE SIGHT OF elephants trudging into sugar-cane fields and banana plantations, with hapless villagers trying to chase them away by beating drums or bursting firecrackers, has become a frequently witnessed scene all across Asia. As farmland encroaches onto natural habitats, these ‘man-elephant conflicts’ are turning many small farmers against elephants, and the results can be bad for both man and beast.

But in Sri Lanka, one man has come up with a novel way of changing this relationship. Thusitha Ranasinghe has discovered a way to utilise the presence of the elephants that harms neither elephant ...

 

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