Ravi Corea
Other projects
1 Sep 2008
A Land Use Approach to Elephant Conservation – Establishing a Pilot Habitat Enrichment Project to Increase Forest Resources to Reduce Biodiversity Loss and Mitigate Human Elephant Conflicts in Sri Lanka
The Field Scouts Program is a community integrated field research program that involves training villagers to carry out the data collection, data storing and some limited analysis on the ecology of elephants to resolve human elephant conflict (HEC). Lack of empirical data on the local elephant population is a deficiency that hinders the efforts to resolve HEC as well as address other elephant conservation issues successfully.
Data will be used for the following purposes:
1) To develop conservation management strategies which includes the resolution of HEC;
2) To provide ecological data when village expansion is planned at the local level, and at the national level when government authorities enact rural development programs;
3) To develop alternative economic incentives to reduce dependency on agriculture.
If we know the population biology and the ecology of the local elephants our efforts can be more effective.
The Field Scouts Program is a pioneering attempt to build the capacity of local people to participate in wildlife research and conservation in an effort to promote a new paradigm for sustainable conservation.