By Shermin de Silva | Project Leader
The work started with this project is continuing under GlobalGiving Project No. 37368 - "Investing in Communities to Conserve Elephants."
It has two components:
1) Understanding how elephants and people share space
Using camera traps, we are able to observe how people, elephants and other animals are using landscapes outside protected areas. We have deployed more than 20 cameras over fourteen months so far and are working our way up to 40. The hundreds of photos show that elephants frequently occur on private lands. This includes herds with calves, which are mostly active at night so as to avoid people. On the one hand, this is good news because it shows how adaptable elephants are in being able to continue surviving on land that is heavily used by people. On the other hand this exposes them to lots of risks. We've enlisted the help of the School of Computing from the University of Colombo to help us sort and analyze the photographs.
2) Supporting communities living with elephants
Six schools were supported in the first round of fundraising (GG project 33222). At the end of the Sri Lankan school year in December 2018 we had a very special visitor who brought a wealth of Montessori training material to donate to each school and conducted a crash course on Positive Discipline with all the teachers. In January, the start of the school year, the materials were distributed to each school. In February we started a fresh survey of new communities and schools to include in the program and expect to complete this assessment by mid-March.
Please see attached document for the full report with photographs and visit the new project to keep receiving future updates!
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