A sign alerts train operators to the presence of wild elephants, near the site where a passenger train hit a herd and killed six elephants in Minneriya, Sri Lanka, Feb. 20, 2025. Priyan Malinda/AP

A Sri Lankan express train killed an elephant and was derailed on Tuesday despite safety measures introduced after the country's worst wildlife railway accident three months ago on the same route. Local officials said the young wild elephant crossing the track near Habarana was run over by the same train involved in the February 20 accident that killed seven elephants. After that crash, officials imposed speed limits on trains passing through elephant habitats.

No passengers were injured in the accident, which occurred some 110 miles by road east of the capital Colombo.

Railway authorities said an investigation was underway, and engineers were trying to put the Colombo-Batticaloa train back on the track after the pre-dawn crash.

The authorities had earlier announced changes to train timetables and efforts to clear shrubs from either side of the track to improve visibility for drivers, to give them more time to avoid hitting elephants.

Wildlife officials have said that 139 elephants have been killed by trains over the past 17 years, since authorities began collecting such data.

The government has also announced that 1,195 people and 3,484 elephants have been killed in the past decade due to the worsening human-elephant conflict on the island.

Killing or harming elephants is a criminal offense in Sri Lanka, which has an estimated 7,000 wild elephants — considered a national treasure, partly due to their significance in Buddhist culture.

However, the killings continue, as desperate farmers struggle with elephants raiding their crops and destroying livelihoods.

Many elephants have been electrocuted, shot, or poisoned. Sometimes, explosive-laden fruits are used to maim the animals, often resulting in painful deaths.

India, which has a wild elephant population more than twice as large as Sri Lanka, also deals with regular train-pachyderm collisions. India has lost about 200 elephants over the last decade to train accidents alone, and that's in addition to high number of deaths from poaching and accidental electrocutions.

The Indian government has introduced measures to limit train speeds in dedicated elephant corridors, but campaigners say the rules are often poorly enforced.

Earlier this year the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu became the first to launch an artificial intelligence and machine learning-enabled surveillance system to help prevent elephant deaths on railways.

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