An islandwide operation placing soldiers alongside wildlife officers in the field to protect wild elephants began on Monday at Galkiriyagama, in the North-Western Wildlife Zone. The operation is named ‘Hasthi Sena’ — Elephant Force.

It is being run jointly by the Ministry of Environment, the armed forces and the Department of Wildlife Conservation, the Daily Mirror reported and Hiru News reported in matching terms.

Scale and command

Environment Minister Dr. Dammika Patabendi said the initial phase would focus on 17 elephants currently facing threats.

Sixty military personnel have been deployed, organised into 10 operational teams across six groups. The operation runs islandwide under the direct supervision of Army Commander Lieutenant General Nilantha Premaratne.

The Minister said plans are underway to cover around 80 per cent of areas inhabited by elephants through the operation, with the remaining 20 per cent addressed through a separate initiative. Neither filing describes what that separate initiative is.

Also at the launch were North-Western Wildlife Director Pushpantha Wimaladasa, Environment Ministry adviser Ravindra Kariyawasam, Major General Kaminda Silva of the Army’s 21 Division, 212 Brigade Commander Brigadier Basnayake and Lieutenant Colonel Abeywickrama.

Day one: seizures at Kala Wewa

By Monday evening the operation had produced its first enforcement results. A large quantity of illegal items — unauthorised firearms, ammunition, animal traps and hakka-patas, the explosive-laden baits that detonate in an animal’s mouth — was seized in the Kala Wewa area, the Daily Mirror reported separately.

The seized items include firearms capable of killing elephants and other wild animals. They are to be produced before the Kekirawa Magistrate’s Court. Those arrested and the seized items will be handed to the relevant authorities for action under the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance.

Authorities said raids would continue against illegal firearms, hakka-patas, unauthorised electric fences and animal traps.

This is the plan from October, now in the field

The operation is the first visible deployment under an arrangement agreed at the Environment Ministry on 23 October, when a joint wildlife operations room was established at Army Headquarters and the military took on a standing role in elephant protection.

That agreement set out training, shared facilities and special detachments to monitor vulnerable tuskers — but gave no start date, no personnel numbers and no figure for how many elephants had been identified as at risk. Monday’s launch supplies all three: 2 November, 60 personnel, 17 elephants.

Context

The operation follows a sustained run of elephant killings. Parliament was told in October that 455 wild elephants died in 2025. The tusker Kavantissa was shot dead on 16 October, and a tusker was found dead at Kahatagasdigiliya on 1 November with its left tusk cut away.

Hiru’s filing notes that the Department of Wildlife Conservation has opened an investigation into that Kahatagasdigiliya carcass, found in scrub beside a paddy field adjoining the Kayangollewa tank in Meeminnawala, and that police, army intelligence and wildlife officers are working to arrest those responsible.

A naming inconsistency worth recording

The three filings describe the military partner three different ways: the Daily Mirror’s launch report says “the Armed Forces”, its seizures report says “the Sri Lanka Army”, and Hiru’s Sinhala says ත්‍රිවිධ හමුදාව — the Tri-Forces. The named officers are all Army. Whether the navy and air force are formally party to the operation is not established by any of the three. The Daily Mirror also spells the ministry adviser’s name two ways across its own two filings — Ravindra and Ravinda Kariyawasam.

Not reported

None of the filings gives a budget, a duration, or an end date. None names the 17 elephants or says where they are. None explains the legal basis on which soldiers participate in wildlife enforcement, or what powers they hold.

The arrest and seizure figures missing from the 2 November filings were supplied on 5 November — see the update below.

Neither filing says why the launch took place in the North-Western Wildlife Zone, nor which areas fall into the 20 per cent the operation will not cover.

Update — 5 November: three arrested, and the personnel figures reconcile

A fuller account of the Galkiriyagama operation published by the Daily Mirror on Thursday answers several of the questions listed above.

Three suspects were arrested, in the Nikkiniya Grama Niladhari Division within the Kekirawa Divisional Secretariat Division — the same divisional secretariat that contains Kala Wewa, and the court named in the original filing. The search covered 10 Grama Niladhari divisions of the Galkiriyagama Wildlife Range identified as vulnerable to wildlife crime.

The apparent discrepancy in personnel numbers resolves. This article reported 60 military personnel in ten teams. Thursday’s filing gives the full composition: ten teams of nine, each led by a wildlife officer and made up of two Civil Security Department personnel and six Army personnel. Ten teams of six soldiers is exactly the 60 military personnel first reported — so the operation fields 90 people in total, of whom 60 are Army. The two filings are consistent; the first simply counted only the military.

The seizures are itemised for the first time: spring-loaded traps used against elephants, wires, cables, snares, explosives and parts of dead animals. Specifically, six sets of deer antlers, one locally made muzzle-loading firearm, two knives and a sword with deer-antler handles, a fragment of an elephant’s jawbone, lead pellets and pieces of lead, an iron rod for loading gunpowder, percussion cap fragments, coils of wire and 650 grams of meat, along with two 12-bore firearms, a spring-loaded trap and seven rounds of 12-bore SG ammunition.

The Environment Ministry and the Department of Wildlife Conservation said such joint operations would continue.

One caveat. Thursday’s filing gives no date for the raid it describes. Its location, divisional secretariat, team structure and seizure categories all match the day-one action reported here, which is why it is recorded as a fuller account of that operation rather than as a separate later raid — but the Daily Mirror does not state this, and a subsequent raid in the same range cannot be ruled out from the filing alone.

Sources