Elephant Care Center is a project established in 2022 which intends to provide higher care for captive elephants in Sri Lanka by creating a more suitable environment, where their needs and well-being are our first priority. Our end goal is to open a medical center as well as create a mobile health truck where any captive elephant in need will be able to receive appropriate treatment and stay in our facility until they have recovered or permanently depending on the reached decision with the owner. This is an ambitious goal that cannot be met without the help of visitors and volunteers.
Based between Kegalle and Kandy, we are open to visitors and volunteers in a limited capacity where you will be able to observe, learn and walk with our resident elephant, Saliya. We hope to raise awareness amongst the general public about their situation and showcase a better way to care for these giants in Sri Lanka.
We are currently working on building facilities on our homeland to be able to house captive elephants more suitably. Our first priority is to build a night and musth enclosure to allow Saliya, our permanent resident, to live freely during his musth and at night.
Project 1: Musth Enclosure
Due to the aggressive behaviour during musth, specific facilities are needed to house the bull elephant for their own safety, that of the mahout, staff and visitors, if they are to live chain-free.
However, to our knowledge, all captive elephants in Sri Lanka are currently chained during their musth due to the lack of proper facilities which are very expensive to build. This has detrimental physical and mental effects on the elephant.