Minneriya Elephant Corridor
An area of habitat connecting wildlife populations, usually national parks or nature reserves, that are separated by human activities or structures such as roads, residential areas, farmlands, development, or logging is called a wildlife corridor, habitat corridor, or green corridor.
Corridors allow the exchange of wildlife populations among separated protected areas, facilitating genetic diversity and reestablishing population fluctuations due to natural disasters.


The main goal of implementing habitat corridors is to increase biodiversity, which is endangered due to areas of land being broken up by human interference. This fragmentation can result in unstable population numbers and many animal and plant species becoming endangered.
By reconnecting the fragments, these population fluctuations can decrease dramatically as isolation is somewhat limited.
The Minneriya wildlife corridor is the only such wildlife corridor in Sri Lanka and is primarily implemented to mitigate the human-elephant conflict arising from the high density of the elephant population within the area.
It connects the Minneriya National Park with the Kaudulla and Wasgamuwa National Parks, allowing wildlife, mainly elephants, to migrate between the parks.
During the dry season of August and September, many elephants migrate to Minneriya National Park, as the relatively larger Minneriya tank can support more elephants than the water sources in the other two parks. During the rainy season, the elephants migrate back to the other two parks to find breathing space from other herds, as the relatively smaller tanks in Wasgamuwa and Kaudulla can support them.
Huge herds of elephants, sometimes numbering up to 300, converge within a few square kilometres of the Minneriya tank during the dry season. This reduces the risk of elephants coming into nearby villages and farms in search of food and water during this period.
