Sri Lanka Orphanage Nurtures, Helps Save Elephants

Dozens of giggling girls watched as Menike sucked from her bottle of milk, occasionally lifting her small trunk to demand more. Her keeper, Silva, was not amused.

“She shows off a little bit when there are visitors,” Silva said.

Menike, a 16-month-old female, is Sri Lanka’s fifth elephant born in captivity under a 15-year-old conservation effort that combines a breeding program with orphan rescue and rehabilitation of adults.

At the Elephant Orphanage at Pinnawela, 55 miles from Colombo, tourists and residents gather daily to watch the antics of 38 elephants, large and small, at the sprawling 28-acre orphanage, set in a coconut plantation.

Samarasinghe Seelaratne, the assistant curator of the orphanage, said most of the baby elephants had been abandoned by their parents.

Many had fallen into deep water holes in the jungle, injured themselves and were found by villagers. Some of the bigger ones had been shot and wounded by poachers and later brought to Pinnawela by Wild Life Department officials.

“Look, isn’t she sweet,” a 14-year-old girl shouted as Menike, whose mother died of illness last year, playfully wrapped her trunk around her trainer to stop him from feeding another baby elephant.

“They are very jealous of each other,” Silva said.

When the feeding time approaches, shrill sounds rend the air. The hungry elephants are not prepared to wait, and they cry like babies.

The keepers gather the 16 baby elephants in a small, open-thatched hut where they are tied to posts and fed a powdered milk formula from old liquor bottles.

Feeding, which takes place five times a day, is hard work for Pinnawela’s five mahouts. The elephants are annoyed if they are not the first to be fed--trying to break their ropes or stamping the ground in anger.

All of them are tame, however, and happy to be petted by the steady stream of visitors, who bring revenue to the orphanage by paying a small admission fee.

Bath time is 10 a.m., and the motley group of elephants is taken by their mahouts to a river across the road.

Like most elephants, Pinnawela’s residents love the water and laze in it for two hours, twice a day, relaxing in the cool flow, their trunks jutting out of the water.

Curator Seelaratne said the five elephants born in captivity were all sired by Vijay, a huge 25-year-old male brought to Pinnawela when he was 12 years old.

Except for Menike, they are fed by their mothers.

Bradley Fernando, director of the Colombo Zoo, which runs the center, said the center was expecting two births next year after Vijay mated with two elephants brought from the zoo.

Some Pinnawela elephants have been presented as gifts to foreign presidents and prime ministers by their Sri Lankan counterparts.

In 1984, President Junius Jayewardene presented a Pinnawela elephant to President Ronald Reagan on the White House lawn in Washington.

Some orphans have been donated to Buddhist temples to be used on ceremonial occasions only.

The orphanage does not allow the elephants to be used as work animals.

“All recipients have to sign an agreement prohibiting the use of the animal for work,” Seelaratne said.

Experts said a good work elephant is worth $20,000 to $25,000.

Fernando said conservation of the Asian elephant was important because of its dwindling population. He said only about 3,000 elephants are left in Sri Lanka.

The last estimate of the elephant population was made in 1970 by the U.S.-based Smithsonian Institution, which estimated the number at 2,500 to 3,500, Fernando said. A previous estimate in the mid-1960s set the elephant population at about 6,000, he said.