Behavior of Asian Elephants in Sri Lanka

Panel Discussion on Wildlife Richness of Sri Lanka

from Wildlife Conservation and Photographic perspectives.

This program is hosted by America Sri Lankan Photographic Art Society in Los Angeles California, USA to promote and showcase the incredibly rich biodiversity of the pearl of Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka, to the world. www.usacaaspas.com

Date:Saturday ,8th August 2020
Time: 7.30am to 8.30am Local Time in Los Angeles
8pm to 9pm Local Time in Sri Lanka
Panelist: Prithiviraj Fernando, MBBS, MSc, PhD

Dr. Fernando qualified as a medical doctor but decided not to practice medicine but to pursue a career in conservation biology. Subsequently he obtained a MSc and PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Oregon, USA. The title of his PhD thesis was ‘Genetics Ecology and Conservation of the Asian Elephant’. He pioneered genetic analysis of Asian elephants using their dung and initiated radio tracking of elephants in Sri Lanka. Upon completion of his PhD in 1999, he joined Columbia University New York, where he continued research on Asian elephants. During this time, he conducted a range-wide genetic evaluation of Asian elephants and established that the elephants in Borneo were not feral but a distinct subspecies. He also worked on the critically endangered Javan rhino and the African rhinos.

In 2004, he decided to return to Sri Lanka and set up the Centre for Conservation and Research of which he is the Chairman. The focus of CCR has been on conducting research and conversion of findings to policy and management to better mitigate the human-elephant conflict and conserve elephants.

He has conducted studies on elephants and provided advice on elephant management and human-elephant conflict mitigation for governments and conservation agencies in Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar and Malaysia. In addition to publishing widely in scientific journals, he has conducted a review of human-elephant conflict mitigation methods in South Asia with WWF and is a member of Asian Elephant Specialist Group working group on producing guidelines for human-elephant conflict mitigation. He is currently authoring a guide to human-elephant conflict mitigation for the World Bank, for distribution in Asia and Africa. He has been a research associate of the Smithsonian Institution, USA since 2005 and a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the IUCN since 2000. He has supervised graduate students from Sri Lanka, India, USA and Japan. He currently serves on Doctoral students’ advisory committees in the University of Colombo and National Institute of Advanced Studies, India. He has received the Presidential award for scientific excellence in Sri Lanka and the Whitley award from HRH Princess Anne.