Gift elephants, legalise wild boar killing: Dy. Minister

5 September 2017 08:41 pm

Wild life laws should be amended and new laws should be implemented for common animal species that were considered threat to humans, Skills Development and Vocational Training Deputy Minister Karunarathne Paranawithana suggested while attending the Balangoda Coordination Committee yesterday.

The minister said most of the wild animals had some form of threat to humans and suitable measures should be taken to control the fast spreading animal species to minimise the conflict.

“When it comes to human-elephant conflict, it had been a major problem in rural areas.

There are about 6,000 elephants in the country and its population is increasing rapidly. 6,000 elephants are too many for Sri Lankan forests to sustain. 4,000 elephants are more than enough,” he said.

“I’m not recommending killing the elephants, but country’s animal rights and wild life laws should be amended. The laws should be amended to rear elephants as pets and surplus wild-elephants should be given to other countries to control the elephant population,” Minister Paranawithana said.

Several participants made the Deputy Minister aware of the nuisance caused by other wild animals like wild boar and monkeys.

In response Deputy Minister Paranawithana stated that, if laws had been enforced legalising the killing of such animals, people should be allowed to sell their meat as well.

“No one fuss about killing of mosquitoes. The social dialog regarding animal rights have become no more practical,” he said.

He said that he would discuss the matter in the next parliament session. (Chaturanga Pradeep)