Elephants eat their crops. Farmers strike back. It's a war that's only getting worse

A bull male elephant is seen meticulously dismantling an electric fence inside Yala National Park in Sri Lanka. Elephants are often herded into parks to keep them from eating the crops of farmers, but the pachyderms have figured out how to manipulate the wooden fence poles to lay the wires flat and then step over them. Brent Stirton//Reportage Archive hide caption toggle caption Brent Stirton//Reportage Archive DAMBULLA, Sri Lanka –- On a break, farmer Gunasinghe Kapuga draws on a cigarette and describes relations between farmers and elephants that raid their fields in the central Sri Lankan district of Matale: "Obviously, it's war." He's referring to increasingly deadly encounters between farmers and pachyderms. Now Kapuga fears that the latest Mideast war will intensify that conflict — because the war is pushing up the price of fuel and fertilizer, so farmers are spending more to plant less. And he believes that means farmers will be more vigilant in attacking elephants who raid their fields: "More elephants will die or more farmers will die." Already, the stakes are high. Kapuga nods to men digging mud out of shin-deep water, preparing the paddy fields for planting rice. The other day, an elephant wandered onto this very field. Kapuga points to a young man: "He fearlessly chased the elephant away, he ran after it with a flashing torch and threw firecrackers at it," he says. "Some elephants turn around — and attack. …