Srilal Miththapala talks about his book on ‘Elephantine Tales’
28 May 2023 | By Naveed Rozais
- Srilal Miththapala on his collection of anecdotes with our gentle giants
The Sri Lankan elephant is perhaps one of our most charismatic creatures. As an animal, they, along with their African and Indian counterparts, also capture the world’s imagination. In a local context, they are the subject of much conversation. They are prolific tourism drivers, they hold a revered place in Lankan culture and, unfortunately, are also in grave danger because of the ever-increasing incidences of Human-Elephant Conflict (HEC).
This week, The Sunday Morning Brunch sat down with one of Sri Lanka’s most passionate wildlife enthusiasts and advocates, Srilal Miththapala, who has a close attachment to elephants in particular and from a young age has developed an unshakeable bond with these magnificent creatures.
Earlier this month, Srilal published ‘Elephantine Tales,’ a personal odyssey that captures his experiences with elephants over the years as well as other anecdotes from the time he has spent in Sri Lanka’s national parks since his youth.
Speaking with Brunch, Srilal shared that the idea for ‘Elephantine Tales’ had come to him when he had been recuperating from heart surgery. A friend had given him some books to read in recovery, one of which had been a book of anecdotes written by a game ranger in South Africa. Reading through these anecdotes had inspired Srilal to begin writing a book about his own experiences in Sri Lanka’s wilderness, and so, four years later, ‘Elephantine Tales’ was born.
Developing a passion for elephants
While elephants are indeed captivating, Brunch found ourselves wondering just what it was that first drew Srilal to them and drove him to devote so much of his personal time studying them.
Delving into his past, Srilal took us back to when he was five or six years old; his father was a surveyor cartographer and was invited by the Dehiwala Zoo to map out the zoo’s route system for visitors to be able to guide themselves through the zoo. It so worked out that Srilal would end up visiting the zoo with his father every Saturday and while his father worked in the office on mapping out the zoo, Srilal (supervised by a senior curator) would hang around the zoo occupying himself by looking at the animals.
More often than not, Srilal shared, he had found himself at the elephant paddock. “I must have been overawed by their size and strength – I was only a toddler of five or six years old,” he recalled. “I used to spend the whole day there sitting and gazing at them and watching how they moved around. It was that, I think, which planted the seed for my love of elephants.”
Upon growing older, Srilal pursued a successful career in hospitality, but his love for wildlife and elephants never left him. Indeed, Srilal comes from a family of wildlife enthusiasts, advocates, and researchers. Wildlife was so important to the Miththapala family that it always formulated their decisions when heading out of Colombo.
In the 1990s, they discovered the beauty and versatility of Udawalawe National Park. Less than four hours from Colombo and full of elephants and other wildlife, it became a regular hideaway for the family, visiting practically every other six weeks and staying in a bungalow within the park.
Srilal (and his children) became so familiar with the Udawalawe elephants that they began to recognise them and even give them names, to record when and where they had seen them and what they were doing.
From hobby to something more
“This was all just a hobby though; I still had my regular job. The turning point was when the US Fish and Wildlife Service advertised a grant for private people and entities to study wild elephants in Sri Lanka (until that time it only used to give funding to the Department of Wildlife Conservation),” Srilal explained. “I quickly made up a project report to study the behaviour and movement patterns of the elephants at Udawalawe and submitted it with a budget. I was thrilled to find out it got approved.”
Hiring a full-time team of three people, Srilal headed the research project for one-and-a-half years, cataloguing and studying the individual elephants within Udawalawe, identifying 76 individual elephants, and studying their movements during each season. The project was well-received by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and marked Srilal’s first formal involvement in analytical scientific study.
Working on that research project saw Srilal become anxious to share his expertise and inculcate the same interest in elephants that he developed as a child and so, he began conducting programmes for teenagers in many of Colombo’s schools on elephants, their behaviour, the dangers they face, and how to protect them.
“I’m proud to say that I covered most of the schools in Colombo and also a few in Kandy. One highlight was when the Overseas School of Colombo asked me to do a programme. After the day was set, I found out it was for kindergarten students. I had to redo my presentation to suit the kids, but it was the most fulfilling activity. The kids were uninhibited and asked so many questions. Eventually, the teacher said we had to stop because their next class was starting,” Srilal said.
In the field of formal research, Srilal also noted how many researchers conducted their research in silos or isolation, and using his position and experience in the hotel trade, he invited them to hotels to talk about what they were doing and build more synergy between local researchers.
Now, in his retirement, Srilal still regularly immerses himself in the beauty of Sri Lanka’s national parks, and of course, the elephants that reside in them. In his years of traversing our national parks, he has built strong relationships with jeep drivers in every park, training them on more mindful practices as drivers in wildlife sanctuaries and recommending them to any visitors he sends to the parks.
‘Elephantine Tales’
Srilal’s newly-published book ‘Elephantine Tales’ tells stories of his experiences as a wildlife enthusiast (and researcher) in our national parks. In his own words, ‘Elephantine Tales’ is a simple book – a collection of short stories that are easy to read and made to appeal to a wide range of readers, from young to old and from casual nature lovers to passionate enthusiasts.
Srilal shared with Brunch that one of the most interesting parts of creating ‘Elephantine Tales’ was that he was really able to delve deep into his memories and by documenting them, reanalyse them.
“When I relived those old experiences, I began to see some of the things that had happened differently and perhaps draw conclusions about some of the behaviours that I had not thought about at the height of the event. It brought about a lot of thinking into what had really happened over the years,” Srilal said.
One such example was about a time he had been alone in an open jeep in Udawalawe (the jeep driver and tracker had got out of the jeep to look at a bird a short distance away) and he had suddenly been confronted by a (relatively juvenile) elephant of about 15 years old. The elephant had been aggressive and without provocation, had charged at Srilal’s jeep. Srilal’s response had been to stand up and shout loudly at the elephant.
“I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time – it was such an adrenaline rush – but the elephant stopped dead in its tracks and then moved away,” Srilal recalled. “When I was writing ‘Elephantine Tales,’ I thought deeply about what I had done and realised I had instinctively responded in the proper way – to give a sharp shout and let the elephant know that I’m there and I’m not going to harm them. I relived every one of my memories when writing the book. It was a walk through memory lane.”
One of Srilal’s most powerful elephantine memories – which features in ‘Elephantine Tales’ – was a day when he had been casually walking in front of his bungalow in Udawalawe (located near a waterway) and had suddenly seen a group of about 15 elephants emerge very close to him. He had been entirely unprepared (his camera had been in the bungalow and nowhere near him) and he had quickly hidden in a nearby bush and just watched the group frolicking in the water for about 20 minutes.
The moment highlighted a very powerful message to Srilal – the importance of living in the moment: “I can remember every single movement of every single elephant because I was watching them so intently. If I had had my camera with me, I wouldn’t have observed half of what I saw because I would have been busy taking photos. That’s part of why I think of it as my most memorable experience, because I remember each one, how big they were, and what they were doing,” Srilal said, adding that he took this as a lesson that everyone could learn from – to take time to look at life instead of rushing to document it.
Human-elephant conflict and Sri Lanka
It is no longer possible to discuss elephants without discussing the dangers they face. HEC is chief among the threats elephants face. The last two years have seen close to 400 elephant deaths annually. The vast majority of these deaths are linked either directly or indirectly to HEC.
Within ‘Elephantine Tales,’ Srilal doesn’t touch on HEC as its own separate topic. It is instead woven throughout the book in the context of each anecdote he recounts. For example, when talking about the Udawalawe Elephant Transit Home – a rehabilitation centre in Sri Lanka dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned elephant calves for their eventual release into the wild – Srilal explains why the home exists and why elephants are orphaned, addressing HEC and its effects on elephants in a more abstract and situational way.
Against the backdrop of ever-escalating HEC, Brunch asked Srilal for his views on mitigating HEC. He explained that because elephants were so large and widespread in terms of their ranges (60% of our elephant population is outside the bounds of our national parks) and were comparatively more intelligent than other species, isolated solutions and strategies would rarely work at meaningfully mitigating HEC.
“The only thing that reasonably works is the electric fence and even then you get intelligent fellows who put a log on it to short-circuit it and get across. People build trenches and light firecrackers, but basically, we have intruded into their space. They are animals who don’t stay in one place. They range a lot,” Srilal shared.
“We need a holistic solution from the Government. There are so many good plans that have been developed by private sector research, but Sri Lanka’s flora and fauna laws put every tree and animal in Sri Lanka under the jurisdiction of the State. That is why you need a permit to visit a wildlife park and that is also why the private sector cannot move in and try solutions without commitment from the Government right from the top.”
Sharing the elephantine legacy
Srilal’s ‘Elephantine Tales’ is his attempt to share his love for elephants and wildlife with the world. “I’ve tried to capture the happiness, satisfaction, and stress relief I get from immersing myself in nature and interacting with it. I hope it will inspire people to go to our national parks and open their eyes and listen with all their senses; to take in the sights, smells, and sounds, and become more attuned to nature. It is my wish that people reading ‘Elephantine Tales’ will share and come to understand what I have felt in nature,” he shared.