Human-elephant conflict is increasing due to conversion of elephant habitat to settlements and permanent cultivation.

[3] Sri Lankan elephants are the largest subspecies reaching a shoulder height of between 2 and 3.5 m (6.6 and 11.5 ft), weigh between 2,000 and 5,500 kg (4,400 and 12,100 lb), and have 19 pairs of ribs.

Their skin colour is darker than of indicus and of sumatranus with larger and more distinct patches of depigmentation on ears, face, trunk and belly.

It was over 1.5 m (5 ft) tall but had shorter legs than usual and was the main aggressor in an encounter with a younger bull.

[13] In the historical past, elephants were widely distributed from sea level to the highest mountain ranges.

During the colonial period from 1505 to 1948, the wet zone was converted to commercially used fields and became heavily settled.

In the first half of the 19th century, forests in the montane zone were cleared large-scale for the planting of coffee, and afterward tea.

[16] In the early 20th century, mega reservoirs were constructed in the dry zone for irrigated agriculture.

In Sri Lanka's northwestern region, feeding behaviour of elephants was observed during the period of January 1998 to December 1999.

Traditional slash-and-burn agriculture creates optimum habitat for elephants through promoting successional vegetation.

[13] Females and calves generally form small, loosely associated social groups without the hierarchical tier structure exhibited by African bush elephants.

[citation needed] Like all Asian elephants, the Sri Lankan subspecies communicates using visual, acoustic and chemical signals.

Between 1990 and 1994, a total of 261 wild elephants died either as a result of gunshot injuries, or were killed by poachers and land mines.

Human population growth and demand for land is a greater threat today, and the range of elephants continues to decline as irrigation and development projects lead to the conversion of natural land to irrigated agriculture and settlements.

[30] The Sri Lankan Department of Wildlife Conservation official records showed that 407 elephants were killed in 2019.

[13] Elephants were a common element in Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils heraldry for over two thousand years and remained so through British colonial rule.

Elephants were exported from the island for hundreds of years and into the Portuguese and Dutch colonial era.

[35] Legal reforms pertaining to the captive elephant population was introduced in 2021, just as a landmark case into dozens of calves being stolen from their herds in a ten-year period collapsed with the Attorney General's Department dropping charges and releasing the elephants to their former owners.