"Elephants have very strong attachments to their natural home range," Manori Gunawardena, director of Environment Foundation Limited, an environmental charity told reporters.
"When its home range is in a development arena it will automatically get confused and will cause problems to humans. That’s why we need to think about elephants before we do a development in their ranges.
"Mattala is one of the examples which is in the news these days."
She was speaking at a forum which organized by The Animal Welfare Trust, a non-profit organization which promotes community based activities.
If more planning was done ahead of projects, future problems could be avoided, researchers say.
Sri Lanka's second international airport in Mattala airport which was a Chinese design-build-transfer (DBT) projec