Saving Forests with Corporate and Public Responsibility
We know this and we know that despite all of their expressed concerns and intentions that the policymakers have little thought of doing much to reverse this trend. Rather than bemoan this…
Author: Rohan Wijesinha
Short Sighted Policies Destroying Sri Lanka’s Wildlife
In February 2023, the prestigious Forbes magazine proclaimed Sri Lanka as having the Top Wildlife Safaris Outside of Africa for the year 2023. “The nation has one of the planet’s densest populations…
Deep Jungle Fever: A Symptom of a Greater Malady
The traditional conservation laws and policies of Sri Lanka are largely not working. If they were there would not be so much unrestrained destruction of wildlife and forests. These pieces of legislation…
Conservation: Reaching a Point of No Return
Last year, Covid dominated all conversations and contributed to the further exacerbation of a multitude of existing man-made environmental and conservation disasters. “Sadly, conservation management decisions seem now to be made at…
Vital Northern Mangroves Need Uncompromising Protection
Tashiya de Mel On the northern coast of Sri Lanka in the Mannar District is a place of extraordinary importance to conservation and to the economic wellbeing of the human populations who…
The Horror Of Horowpathana: Starving Elephants to Death
Right now, and understandably, the media is consumed by the political events of the day, matters of such magnitude that the very future of Sri Lanka is at stake; the wrong decisions…
Ecosystem Restoration? Stop the Continuing Destruction
The laudable theme of this year’s World Wildlife Day is Ecosystem Restoration. What a noble ideal but is it applicable to Sri Lanka? In the last two years, the country has seen…
Conservation in 2021: A Year Like No Other
In 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic devastated the world and under its malevolent cloak, Sri Lanka’s environment, wildlife and wilderness had to face some of the greatest threats they have ever had. Not…
Scattering The Gathering: Intentional or Unintentional?
In a media release dated October 21, 2021 Dr. Anil Jasinghe, Secretary to the Ministry of Environment, in requesting a National Eco-tourism Plan to promote the tourism industry as well as environmental…
Human–Elephant Conflict: Lessons Not Learnt
In 1949, a year after Sri Lanka gained independence, a Committee on the Preservation of Wildlife (Sessional paper XIX – 1949) recommended that when development takes place, elephants living in the proposed…
When Crying in the Wilderness is Just Not Enough
“Knowledge is power: You hear it all the time but knowledge is not power. It’s only potential power. It only becomes power when we apply it and use it.” Jim Kwik These are…
Obliterating the Future by Committing Ecocide
Oxford Languages Every day in Sri Lanka, newspapers, television and social media platforms cite examples of ecocide, a terrible crime that spells doom to the future of all life, human and otherwise.…
Four Million Different Solutions to the Problems of Staying Alive
David Attenborough Forest conservation is primarily about the survival of people, of us, as a species, of protecting ourselves from the detrimental consequences of our own actions. Yet we seem to be…