World’s Lone Elephant Orphanage Tries to Fix Some Wrongs of Man : Sri Lanka: Poachers are partly responsible for the declining herds. Major culprits are the sugar and tea planters who thwart plans for protected forest corridors.

Like any baby, Kumari cries for milk and always wants more. When Udabe Vijayapala brings her a bottle, Kumari gives him a warm, friendly hug with her trunk, still fuzzy with baby hair.

Such is life at Pinnawela, the world’s only elephant orphanage. It has become a popular tourist attraction and a center for animal behavior research on Sri Lanka, an island nation off India’s southern tip.

The center also has helped increase awareness of the threat to Sri Lanka’s wild elephants, which have been reduced from 10,000 or so at the beginning of the century to about 2,500.

About 500 domesticated elephants are used as work animals in Sri Lanka, hauling heavy loads through jungles. Adorned in brocaded cloth and bells, they also are common at religious ceremonies and festivals at Buddhist and Hindu temples.

“We have a tradition in this country of respecting elephants. They are mentioned in our scriptures,” said P.A.S. Prathiraja, director of the Department of National Zoological Gardens, which runs the center.

Ivory poachers are partly responsible for the declining wild herds. But the worst culprits are sugar and tea planters who have cut vast tracts of forest and thwarted government plans to link national parks with protected forest corridors for elephants.

Experts say about 65 to 70 elephants die in the wild each year. About half are killed by man, some slain by armed guards who patrol the perimeters of the plantations.

“The killings have increased during the past 20 years. During this period, 1,500 have died,” said Ranjan Fernando, an environmentalist.

Orphans are often left behind.

Kumari is one of 60 elephants at the orphanage, set in a coconut grove on the banks of the Mahaoya River an hour’s drive from the capital, Colombo.

One-third are between a year old and their teens. But it is the newborns that draw the most attention from the 350 tourists a day who each pay 60 rupees ($1.25) to visit. The fee for using a video camera, however, is more than $100.

The orphanage, which is open every day, takes in about $500,000 from visitor fees each year, making a profit of about $50,000.

At dawn, Vijayapala carries a large plastic bucket of lactogen, a commercial milk formula, to a wooden shack housing nine calves.

As Vijayapala fills quart bottles, Kumari gets impatient and tugs at the metal chains securing her to the pillars. The shack rattles with the trumpeting of hungry youngsters.

As the milk disappears rapidly down her throat, Kumari sighs and tries to cajole more than her quota of seven bottles. She wraps her trunk around the handler and won’t let him go.

The 17 handlers often let tourists feed the calves or stroke their trunks during the five daily feeds. Older elephants feed on leaves.

Twice a day, the elephants are taken to the river for a soak. On a rainy day, the young ones appeared reluctant, pulling and tugging and trying to wander off in different directions.

“Hmmm, just like my kids,” quipped Alan Heuber of Greifenstein-Ulm, Germany, patting his son Jurgen and daughter Kristina on the head.

The government established the orphanage during a drought in 1972 and started with six elephant calves. They had become separated from their herds while searching for water and could not find their way back into the forest.

Even today, most of the elephants taken in by the orphanage are infants, usually weak from hunger and racked by diarrhea or intestinal worms.

Over the years, the orphanage has given away 140 elephants to Buddhist and Hindu shrines and to zoos around the world, said Prathiraja, the director.

Zoologists have been able to study how calves brought to the orphanage are adopted by older animals from other herds. Scientists also have found that lactogen is more suitable than fresh milk.

Authorities plan to begin captive breeding with the 25 adult males and 15 females, most of which have grown up in the orphanage. They want to study elephant breeding as well as increase the number of animals in Sri Lanka. Two females are pregnant now.