Horowpothana Elephant Holding Ground (HEHG), in Horowpathana National Park, in Sri Lanka, was founded in 2011, opened for public in 2011.
In 2015 the country's first Elephant Holding Ground (EHG) was established in the national park, where problem elephants from around the country are translocated to. The EHG comprises 930 ha (2,300 acres) of land within the national park with the capacity for 40 elephants.[4] The translocation process and the management of the EHG has been criticised by a number of sources. The HEHG was constructed in 2013 with the aim of trans-locating elephants that were caught in the human-elephant conflict. According to the last elephant census done at the holding ground in 2019, only nine elephants were remaining from over 50 elephants that had been trans-located there. According to the report, although the HEHG was originally constructed to retain 30 rogue elephants as a solution to the human-elephant conflict, by 2019, 52 elephants had eventually been released to the ground. However, at the time the elephant census of the report was conducted in June 2019, only nine elephants were remaining. A total of 12 had died and the report claims that the DWC lacked information on whether the other 31 elephants had also died or fled.
