By T S Thomas
Colombo, Nov 23: Sama, a teenaged elephant baby lost her limbs in a mine blast in the post war Sri Lanka in northern Jaffna region. But God did not allow her to die, she was rescued, treated with loving tender care and brought to an elephant orphanage, where she is recovering now.
Sama is among 84 elephants in an Elephant Orphanage in Pinnawela, 90 kms from Colombo towards Kandy in Sri Lanka, which is one of the few and largest elephant orphanages in the world. Some of them were trapped in electric fencing, some fell in ditches, some were lost from their herds, and most of them victimised by the human intruders.
Sri Lanka has shown the ‘humanness’ to the largest mammals by treating, feeding and sheltering them, although they were victimised by the greedy men who killed the members of the herd it belonged to or trapped them for gains. The orphanage has many thing to be proud of. The elephants, many of them babies, handicapped and sickly are taken care of by the government as an example for the rest of the world. Each of them have been given a name and treated with dignity.
It was established 1975 with 5 baby elephants by the Sri Lanka Wildlife department. This 24 acres large elephant orphanage is a also breeding place for elephants, twenty elephants were born since 1984, and it has the greatest herd of elephants in captivity in the world. The orphanage was primarily designed to afford care and protection to the many baby elephants found in the jungle without their mothers. In most of these cases the mother had either died or been killed. In some instances the baby had fallen into a pit and in others the mother had fallen in and died.
There are only a few elephant orphanages in the world. Pinnawela has now become one of the bigger orphanages and is quite well known world wide. In 1978 the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage was taken over by the National Zoological Gardens from the Department of Wildlife and a captive breeding program launched in 1982. When the zoo took over there were twelve animals five of whom were babies.
Every day, morning at 8.00 am, the babies are fed on milk and allowed to range freely on the 12 acres large grassland. At around 10.00 am, the elephants are led to the near by river for their bath. Each of them are given the medical care and fed according to the diet prescribed by the veterinary doctors of the orphanage. Says, Dr. Manjule Althenayak, “we take care of them like our own fellow beings and they respond positively to our care and treatment”. Each animal gets approximately 75 kg of green matter a day and in addition each gets 2 kg of a food mixture containing maize, rice bran, powdered gingili seed and minerals. They have access to water twice a day from the river Maha Oya that runs by the Orphanage.
India is one of the largest elephant populated countries in Asia and elephants do have a great role in Hindu festivals and temple rituals. But are they really cared in our country? Very often the poor animal is severely punished for human gains and they are forced to work throughout the day. But when they are old and sick, we ignore them. Veerappan and his successors have killed many elephants for their tusks. What happened to their babies? Many people speak for cows and dogs in India. Can some one speak for elephants too?