‘Meena Gaya’ derails after elephant collision

Batticaloa bound ‘Meena Gaya’ intercity train has collided with a wild elephant yesterday and derailed, the Welikanda Police said.

The train plying from Colombo to Batticaloa has hit a female elephant around 2 a.m. on Monday morning between the Moragollagama and KonWewa railway stations near Welikanda.

The elephant believed to be about 20 years old was severely injured and wildlife veterinary surgeons have attended to the injured elephant, local media reports said.

The passengers of the train were not hurt due to the derailment.

Measures to re-rail the train has started promptly, the Railway Department said.

The Batticaloa bound train collided with an elephant on Sunday early morning also in Palugasweva area killing the elephant. The train derailed after striking the elephant. (Colombopage)

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On Safari in Sri Lanka, See Hundreds of Elephants

A female elephant shepherds her calf between her legs. It scurries beneath her belly, following her trunk and disappearing from my sight as they pass through the tall grass. For a moment, I have to remind myself I’m in Sri Lanka, not somewhere in Africa. Despite the Sri Lankan elephant being noticeably smaller and darker than the African elephant, the setting feels similar: thick brush, muddy earth, a large pool of water where the animals drink. Even the safari vehicle is the same. But here, at the the Udawalawe National Park in southern Sri Lanka, a four-hour drive from the capital city of Colombo, the elephants are the main attraction—not the supporting actors to big cats.

If you’re lucky, you might spot a cat. There’s a small population of leopards inside the park, but they camouflage well, making them almost impossible to see. Elephants, on the other hand, are absolutely everywhere—crossing the grassy, tree-filled park at every turn. There are more than 500 of them (they roam in herds of up to 30), which makes Udawalawe one of the only parks in the country where you’re guaranteed to get a good look.

“Sri Lanka is one of the few places where Asian elephants can be watched for long periods, just behaving like elephants—not running from cars, not raiding crops, just being elephants,” says John Roberts, director of conservation for Minor Hotel Group. On a good afternoon, you’ll catch sight of them around the watering hole alongside water buffalo and dozens of species of birds (there are more than 180 kinds in the park). “Keep your eyes peeled and you may also see sambar deer, water buffalo, jackals, and monkeys, including the gray langur and the endemic toque macaque,” says Sashan Wirasinghe, manager of Abercrombie and Kent Sri Lanka, which organizes tailor-made trips in Sri Lanka and into the park.

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Sri Lankan baby elephant gets international attention

The elephant donated to South Korea by the Sri Lankan government in 2010 got quite a fright when her baby fell into a pool at the Grand Park Zoo in Seoul, South Korea.

The footage recorded by the zoo shows the curious one-year-old elephant – christened ‘Korilanka’ to mark the ties between Sri Lanka and Korea – getting close to the water’s edge and accidentally tumbling in.

Fortunately, the baby elephant was not actually drowning, says Joyce Poole, a National Geographic explorer and co-founder of Elephant Voices: “When elephants swim, they put their trunk out of the water and continue to breathe.”

In the video, the National Geographic reports, the baby can be seen doing this snorkeling behavior—meaning it was in no imminent danger.

Even though the family knows the baby can swim, they are still clearly alarmed it has fallen in without meaning to, as evidenced by their quickly flapping ears, says Poole.

Even the elephant in the background of the video, separated by a fence, starts rapidly pacing back and forth.

“Elephants are drama queens, especially the females. If anything kind of dramatic events happens in the family, it is cause for great excitement,” Poole explains. “It is part of the bonding process.”

The uniquely close family bonds and capacity for empathy of elephants is evident in this display. Only one of the female elephants that helps the baby is its parent, the mother. The other larger, older elephant that springs into action to help,a 36-year-old, is a bonded family member that gets just as worried about the infant as its own mother.

National Geographic points out that in the wild, the older female elephant would likely be a grandmother or aunt of the baby, but in captivity, unrelated elephants are housed together and still form close bonds.

In the video, the two bonded females are clearly close as they coordinate to help the baby out of the water and back to the safety of dry land, the National Geographic reports.

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Two elephants rescued from well in Hambantota

A female elephant and her calf who had fallen into an agricultural well in Bathalayagama, Hambantota have been rescued by officers from the Hambantota Wildlife Range Office.

After being informed of the two trapped elephants he officers used a backhoe to dig a path for the elephants to get out of the well. The operation took over an hour.

Wildlife officers believe that the two elephants had remained trapped inside the well for about two days.

They also said that the trunk of the baby elephant exhibited signs of injury. It is suspected that the elephant had been injured after getting caught in barbed wire in a trap set by hunters.

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Two elephants rescued from well in Hambantota

A female elephant and her calf who had fallen into an agricultural well in Bathalayagama, Hambantota have been rescued by officers from the Hambantota Wildlife Range Office.

After being informed of the two trapped elephants he officers used a backhoe to dig a path for the elephants to get out of the well. The operation took over an hour.

Wildlife officers believe that the two elephants had remained trapped inside the well for about two days.

They also said that the trunk of the baby elephant exhibited signs of injury. It is suspected that the elephant had been injured after getting caught in barbed wire in a trap set by hunters.

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Elephant calf and its mother rescued from Sri Lanka well

An elephant calf and its mother were rescued after being trapped in a well for over two days in Hambantota, Sri Lanka.

A heart warming video shows wildlife workers using a digger to help save the two distressed elephants.

The workers had to dig a path for the elephants so that they could navigate their way out of the well.

According to the wildlife team, the jumbos had remained trapped in the agricultural well for over two days.

But when Hambantota Wildlife got a call about the incident, they managed to rescue the elephants within an hour.

After making their way out of the well, the elephants made their way into the nearby forest range.

This is not the first heartwarming elephant rescue.

An elephant calf and its mother were rescued after being trapped in a well for over two days in Hambantota, Sri Lanka

In February a six-year-old female elephant was rescued after she fell 30ft into a dried-up farm well in Southern India.

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