Policymakers cursed with a lack of original thinking, especially with the possibility of elections in the offing, resort to knee jerk reactions to long standing problems rather than seek informed advice and…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
