A wildlife corridor, also known as a habitat corridor or a “green corridor,” is a section of habitat that connects wildlife populations (often found in national parks or nature reserves) but is divided by human activities or constructions like highways, residential areas, farmlands, development, or logging. By allowing wildlife populations to move between isolated protected areas, corridors promote genetic variety and help to stabilise population fluctuations brought on by natural disasters.
The primary objective of habitat corridor implementation is to boost biodiversity, which is under danger of extinction as a result of human-induced land fragmentation, which causes population numbers to become unstable and many plant and animal species to become endangered. Since isolation is fairly constrained, these population swings can be significantly reduced by re-connecting the fragments. The primary goal of the Minneriya wildlife corridor, the only one of its kind in Sri Lanka, is to lessen human-elephant conflict that results from the area’s dense elephant population. It allows wildlife, primarily elephants, to travel between the Minneriya National Park and the Kaudulla and Wasgamuwa National Parks.
Many elephants move to Minneriya National Park during the dry season of August and September because the park’s comparatively larger tank can accommodate more elephants than the water sources in the other two parks. During the rainy season, the elephants return to the other two parks to get some breathing room from other herds because Wasgamuwa and Kaudulla parks’ comparatively smaller tanks can now sustain them. Within a few square kilometres of the Minneriya tank, massive herds of elephants—up to 300 in size at times—come together during the dry season. This lessens the possibility of elephants entering the surrounding farms and villages during the dry season in quest of food and water.
From December, they migrate to Hurulu eco park for find food and sheltor, and remain untill June.
