The department of wildlife and conservation of Sri Lanka is the main and the only authority engaged in protecting the diverse wildlife of Sri Lanka. To the Sri Lankan biodiversity, the Asian elephant contributes at large. Thus, the species is also considered to be a flagship species in the country. The role played by the department of wildlife is immense to protect these endangered giants.
This video is about a rescue mission deployed by the Sri Lankan wildlife department’s officers to save an innocent giant stuck in an irrigational canal.
These irrigational canals are death traps to elephants and were built a few decades ago without considering the wild fauna. Consequently, many species, including elephants, had to pay with their lives as they come in search of water to these deep canals. Even though the canal’s depth was amicable to elephants, the banks were not built in an elephant-friendly manner. Thus, these banks have a steep slope, and elephants find it hard to get ashore after they get in. As this was the case, later, these slopy banks were interrupted with stairways to allow elephants to climb ashore.
However, with these stairways also there is a catch. Elephants need to be stopped from going downstream at the same time and should be directed to these stairs and forced to climb to get them ashore.
These wildlife officers took their maximum effort to prevent this elephant from moving downstream and struggled to direct her ashore.
Heavy rain started to pour down, making things harder. The rain made banks and stairs slippery and made the water level of the irrigation canal move fast and rise high.
Nevertheless, the rain couldn’t stop the rescue mission. The officers were not ready to give up their effort despite the hardships they had to face because of the rain.
Finally, they could direct her successfully ashore and then chased her into the wild to join with her herd.
