RUNNER-UP CATEGORY MAMMALS
Lakshitha Karunarathna | The Path to Bath

Name: Lakshitha Karunarathna
Picture title: The Path to Bath
Category: Mammals
Nationality: Sri Lanka
Occupation: Even though I spend a large amount of time on the field as a wildlife photographer, I am also a tea taster by profession.

Technical information
Camera: Hasselblad L1D-20c attached to a DJI Mavic 2 Pro Drone
Lens: 28mm f/2.8 Lens
EXIF:11/320 sec at f4.0 (-1.7 e/v) • ISO 3200
Accessories: DJI Mavic 2 Pro Drone

Lakshitha Karunarathna says:

After being playful with mud and dust, a herd of Sri Lankan elephants walks towards a waterhole on their daily path. The darker elephant in the middle had just returned from a solo bath and decided to join the gang anyway, to return to the waterhole and have some fun again. I was mostly documenting the elephants’ disastrous relationship with uncontrolled garbage dumps in Sri Lanka’s Eastern province, and I noticed that at the end of each day, most of the elephants walk to the water holes, which are located near the fragmented forest blocks, where the elephants rest at night and during the day when the temperatures are too high.

Despite the fact that elephants hold the symbolic, cultural, and economic importance in Sri Lanka, a steep decline of this endangered sub-species of the Asian elephant family has been observed, particularly in the last decade. Poaching for ivory, conflicts with humans over the destruction of property and crops, electrocutions through illegal fencing, and irregular garbage dumps have all contributed to the threats in the existence of Sri Lankan elephants, but the greatest threat to their survival is an expanding human population and its demand for land.

Significant areas of elephant range are still being lost to development, with a number of irrigation and development projects, resulting in the conversion of more elephant ranges to irrigated agriculture and settlements.