Project Orange Elephant - a sustainable holistic solution to mitigate human elephant conflicts

Project Orange Elephant (POE) was established as a means to end the increasing human-elephant conflicts due to the incompatibility of rural agriculture practices and elephants. In trials, Asian elephants showed an obvious distaste for oranges (and several other citrus varieties)—and trial orange barriers successfully deterred elephants from raiding crops and village homes.

March 31st 2018 was another landmark day for Project Orange Elephant. After nearly 10 years of hard work on the part of SLWCS and resolute commitment from our farmers to take care of their orange plant amidst constant challenges imposed by drought and rain we are now achieving our final objective, providing farmers with a sustainable source of income that is not susceptible to damage by elephants.

For the second time this year within the last two months we were able to harvest oranges from the orange trees in the village of Randunnewewa. On March 31st the second consignment of two hundred and sixty kilograms of oranges were delivered to the Fruits and Vegetables Collection Center of Cargills Ceylon Ltd in Tambuttegama for resale through their Food City supermarket chain.

SLWCS Volunteers, Jasmin Willis and Alice Megaw from England got a unique opportunity to work with the farmers, helping them to harvest oranges. Below are their accounts of this unique experience.

Alice Megaw – I had a very fun and interesting day picking Ele-friendly oranges with the SLWCS team. I enjoyed visiting the local farms and meeting great people. It was amazing to see how the hard work and commitment from all the farmers and SLWCS staff involved with the project is paying off!

Jasmin Willis – I was so excited to be one of the first volunteers to help harvest oranges with Project Orange Elephant. It was great to meet the farmers who are benefitting from the project and see how successful the Project is so far. I hope the results encourage more farmers to get involved.

We would like to thank all the organizations and individual donors who had supported Project Orange Elephant to ensure the success of this innovative initiative to create coexistence between people and elephants in Wasgamuwa.

Our target is to plant 50,000 orange trees to create a trophic deterrence to discourage elephants from raiding village homes and to ensure a steady supply of oranges to our buyers throughout the year, which in turn will guarantee a sustainable income for our farmers.

Please support Project Orange Elephant to achieve its objective of 50,000 orange trees. To make an online donation please visit our website at: http://www.slwcs.org/#!donate/cee5

Photo Credits:

Chinthaka Weerasinghe/SLWCS
Sarath Kumara/SLWCS
Supun Herath/SLWCS

Big, rumbling thanks to our Corporate Partners for their kind support and to everyone who has donated and supported our wildlife conservation efforts!
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