Don’t Blame the Monkeys
Animal rights activists and conservationists are up in arms about a plan to send 100,000 toque macaque monkeys to China on the request of a private Chinese firm. The government says the…
Environment
Wind Farms : The Death of Mannar
How can the most ambitious renewable power project in Sri Lanka have this many detrimental impacts on the environment and the local communities of Mannar? Thambapawani, a derivation of the name after…
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…
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…
Critical Zone: In Search of New Aesthetics
We are living in a critical zone. Have you ever thought of the critical nature of the zone that we live? Probably not; we take the earth that we live on for…
Converting Conflict into Coexistence Between Humans and Elephants
Photo courtesy of Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne The situation of Asian elephants, Sri Lankan elephants in particular, is critical due to the increase in human-elephant conflicts. Even before the current economic crisis, Human-Elephant…
Saving the Sri Lankan Leopard from Extinction
The leopard is a big cat in the genus Panthera () that has a distribution throughout sub-Saharan Africa, through the Middle East and into several countries in Asia. Once occupying a vast…
Conserving and Protecting Sri Lanka’s Threatened Marine Resources
The oceans around Sri Lanka are a vital resource for food security, trade and shipping, coastal livelihoods, tourism, coastal protection and national security. Its coastal and marine resources and biological diversity, as…
Protecting the Environment in Times of Economic Turmoil
World Environment Day is celebrated every year to highlight the importance of the environment we live in. This year the theme is only one planet but to Sri Lankans it would be…
Protecting and Preserving the Environment Against All Odds
The country’s recent economic and political woes have taken the spotlight away from the myriad cases of blatant environmental degradation going on every day. Big business interests, corrupt officials, unscrupulous politicians and…
Preventing the Extinction of Species
Sri Lanka is home to about 900 species of vertebrates, about 960 species groups of invertebrates (mostly insects), 3,000 species of seed bearing plants and 1,750 species of lower plants. There are…
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…