Elephants of Yala National Park
Sri Lankan Elephants. Living habitat And Areas
On safari in Yala National Park, we would usually get some good sightings of elephants, at least a few of them. However, Yala National Park is not a place where one can expect to see elephants in big numbers. Deeper inside the park, elephants tend to be harder to spot.
The most common sighting is a lone male elephant in Yala National Park, accustomed to jeeps as part of their daily life. While small groups of female elephants with their young can also be seen, these sightings are less frequent and not guaranteed on all elephant safari Sri Lanka tours.
Then, where are the elephants? How many elephants are there in Sri Lanka? Where do they live, where can they be seen? Well, such questions are surprisingly hard to clarify.
A tourist would generally anticipate that elephants live in- and can be observed in national parks. However, the reality is a little different. Elephants are not easily seen in all of the Sri Lankan national parks. It’s different in Udawalawe National Park and Minneriya National Park, where elephants are often observed in bigger numbers.
The number of elephants in Sri Lanka has been estimated to be around 5000, maybe 6000 or 7000. Even 8000 were estimated a few years ago. A more exact scientific figure cannot be indicated, currently. More than 70% of the wild elephants live permanently or partly outside of national parks. Possibly as little as 15-25% of elephants live inside protected areas.
It is the same scenario outside of the parks where elephants roam more. Elephant watching is no easy thing. They are not easily observed. Wild Asian elephants are elusive, created by nature as forest animals. Often hard to find, see and photograph. Mostly covered by forest during the day. By darkness at night. It may take some time and patience before they appear at visible places, that is usually in the late afternoon – evening only.
Northern Side of Yala National Park
We try to focus on the northern region of Yala National Park. The same pattern can be witnessed in our local surroundings and the area until and inside Yala.
Elephants live both inside and outside of the boundaries of the Yala National Park area. Deep inside the national park, fewer elephants would usually be found.
During the wet periods, however, many of the elephants of the region retreat deeper into unknown home locations inside Yala National Park Block 3 and 4. This is the traditional elephant movement scenario from October/November to February/March.
If we try to guess, we believe that the total (east-west/south-north) Yala National Park area, inclusive of bordering jungles, buffer zones, and forests, accommodates 600-700 elephants. Very few of these elephants would be spending all their time, their whole life, inside the national park.
The exact number of elephants in various regions of Yala National Park is not known exactly. Also, it would be hard to identify such a fact. Elephants will move and rarely just stay at one spot. They are moving animals. In smaller circles during the day and night. Traveling in much larger circles during various seasons.
Outside the Yala National Park
Open Landscapes
The Yala National Park is an environment dominated by forest. The northern regions of Yala, especially Yala Block 4, more than the rest of the national park, is covered by fully grown, mature, and tall canopy forest.
While elephants need forest habitats for recreational purposes, they are able to find more food outside tall forest areas, in open landscapes with grass, weeds, and bushes.
This type of habitat is found in cultivated areas. Paddy fields as well as chena fields (‘slash & burn farming’) are used by elephants and other wildlife after the harvest in and during the dry season. By mid-February, before the dry season, many elephants begin a search for fields that were harvested, near forests and national parks.
Near the boundaries of Yala National Park, farmers often cleared the land to create chena fields—slash-and-burn plots cultivated with seasonal rains. Traditionally, this farming practice took place in jungle clearings, which were frequently shared with elephants in Yala National Park.
These lands are used for about five months starting with the clearing at the end of the dry season, making fields ready for the wet season cultivation. Elephants use the same landscape at least half of the year.
Often, chena lands are left abandoned for a year or two before they are used again. In the meantime, nature takes over uncultivated fields. These fields will grow to be excellent elephant feeding habitats. Today, these lands are more frequently utilized. In many cases, used every year but still left uncultivated for more than six months, for elephants to use. They feed in that habitat at night.
A large male elephant. In Buffer area outside Block 4 of Yala National Park
In the rain season farmers cultivate in this landscape