Horton Plains

Horton Plains National Park is a national park in the highlands of Sri Lanka. It lies about 20 kilometres south of Nuwara Eliya and 20 kilometres west of Haputale, 2000 metres above seat level among the second and third tallest mountains in Sri Lanka - Kirigalpotta and Totapola. The average temperature in this area is about 16 C. With high winds in the evening it can be quite chilly. The park covers 31.60 km², and is a mixture of highland forest and wet grassland. This is the only National Park in Sri Lanka where visitors are allowed to walk on their own on the designated tracks.

You can reach Horton plains through Bandarawela or Nuwara Eliya which is about 1 ½ hour drive. It is also possible to take the train up to the Ohiya Station and walk up to the plains which may take about 3-4 hours. But remember this is a uphill climb. There is no accommodation at the plains except two lodges and three camping sites which you must book beforehand.
Sambar is the most common animal in the plains but wild boars and leopards too can be found in this area.

Once you reach Horton plains you can visit the worlds end which is a 4000 feet straight vertical drop. This is of course a 4 kilometre walk from the car park on a beautiful path. This drop can be covered with mist most of the time the and the best time to be up at the worlds end is towards the afternoon. On the way you can also see the bakers falls which is about 2.5 kilometres from the entrance .

Access
Horton Plains can be reached by any of the following routes:
Via Nuwara Eliya, Ambewela, Pattipola (20 miles/32 km)
Haputale or Welimada, Boralanda, Ohiya (24 miles/38km)
Nuwara Eliya, Hakgala, Rendapola, Ambewela, Pattipola (24 miles/38 km).
Adventurous visitors can trek into the park along the Thalawakele-Agarapatana-Diyagama and the Belihul Oya-Nagarak trails.

Asian Pop Sexing Sri Lanka

How a Tamil immigrant girl grew up to become an erotica queen and new voice in South Asian literature

It was going to be a Sri Lankan immigrant fairy tale come true. Groomed by nuns at Holy Cross school in Connecticut, Mary Anne Mohanraj, the daughter of Tamil immigrants, would go to college, become a lawyer or a doctor and then settle down into a happy arranged marriage ...
Mohanraj has indeed found success, but not the kind her parents can brag about at potlucks in the Tamil community. Instead of curing infectious diseases, she writes erotica. So much of it, in fact, that Intersmut magazine dubbed her the "queen of the alt.sex.stories newsgroup."

Now after several hot-off-the-Internet collections of steamy sex writing, South Asia's most famous smut author has expanded her literary repertoire. HarperCollins has just published Monhanraj's debut collection of short fiction, "Bodies in Motion," which follows two sprawling Sri Lankan Tamil families joined by marriage through interlinked stories over several generations, crisscrossing between America and Sri Lanka, scarred by civil war and immigration. (Mohanraj reads from her book tonight at A Clear Well Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco at 7 pm.)
"It's a more wide-angle lens than my erotica," says Mohanraj, 34, who is currently a visiting professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

But whether it's 1939 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, or 1999 in Berkeley, California, some things don't change -- the secrets and silences around sex and the collision of desires and expectations. Or as Mohanraj puts it, "Will you do what is conventionally expected of you and can you find pleasure in that?"

"This book is bigger than its treatment of sex," says fellow author Abha Dawesar, whose own book "Babyji" raised eyebrows with its subversive take on South Asians and sexuality. "The interconnected stories are as much about sex as gender." And sexuality and race and class and how they all rub up against each other, Mohanraj adds.

When Mohanraj left her sheltered von Trapp family life in Connecticut and moved to college in Chicago, she began experiencing some of these collisions of sexuality and race firsthand.
"I started dating white boys and started several years of arguments with my parents," she says. It was very typical immigrant drama, she remembers -- big fights when she came home followed by her mother cooking her favorite curries. But as she became more independent and aware of her desires, her parents told her they should have sent her to a convent school in Sri Lanka.

This is ironic because in Sri Lanka girls her age were being drafted into the Tamil Tigers at the height of the civil war -- or going clubbing in Colombo. "But the immigrant comes to America with a fixed awareness of the homeland as they left it," says Mohanraj, whose parents moved from Sri Lanka to the United States in 1973, when she was 2, before civil war tore the island apart. "They carry that world in their head while the homeland watches MTV."
Her parents, like most couples of their generation in Sri Lanka, had an arranged marriage, and it seems to have worked out well. "According to old photographs, my father was a good-looking young doctor. So what's not to like?" deadpans Mohanraj. Mohanraj remembers that when she turned 16, her mother sent her picture to India on a sort of exploratory mission to fish for marriage prospects. "I threw a fit," says Mohanraj.

But it was nothing compared to the meltdown her parents had when her Internet exploits came to light. Thanks to the Tamil diaspora gossip-vine, friends of family friends in England called her parents to ask, "Do you know what your daughter is putting out on the Internet?"
For six months they didn't talk to each other. It wasn't just the odd story being posted on alt.sex.stories. Mohanraj was busy being, as she calls herself on her own Web site, "something of a sexuality activist." She was the editor-in-chief of an online erotica magazine, Clean Sheets. She founded and moderates the Internet Erotica Writers Workshop. She's put together anthologies like "Wet and Aqua Erotica" (which, she says proudly, is in its fifth printing) and her own collection of Internet erotica, "Torn Shapes of Desire."

This was all a little too much for a family where even her doctor father had never had the birds-and-bees conversation with her, leaving it up to the nuns at Holy Cross. The nuns drilled in the message that sex could get you into big trouble. But Mohanraj says it was at least better than the sex ed some others were getting, as she discovered when she moved to Utah to do her Ph.D. "Some of my college students thought you couldn't get pregnant if you had sex standing up," she recalls, still aghast.

But Mohanraj felt that, come what may, she needed to tell the truth about sex. Julie Shigekuni, who was her adviser when she was doing her master's in fine arts at Mills College in Oakland, noticed that passion. "Mary Anne wanted to be known for something she hadn't yet pulled off, which made being around her feel a little dangerous," says Shigekuni, now a professor of English at the University of New Mexico. "She was ever interested in exploring ways people become physically entangled and emotionally intimate, yet she felt like someone who had been well loved and protected."

The "queen of alt.sex" was just as happy babysitting Shigekuni's daughters while she was at Mills and concocting delicious Sri Lankan dishes (she's even written a cookbook) as she was writing about a dangerous liaison between a gorgeous woman and a pizza delivery man in one of her Internet stories.

Mohanraj happened onto sex writing by chance. While scrolling through bulletin boards in the early days of the Internet, she stumbled upon the alt.sex groups. The first erotic story she read was so badly written she decided she could do better.

Her first attempt, "American Airlines Cockpit," about two women in, you guessed it, the cockpit of an American Airlines flight, was, she says, "embarrassingly bad." But she was amazed at how much people liked it and how they clamored for more. So she kept doing it. "Plus the Net gives you a sense of anonymity as if you were talking to 10 nice people you knew," she adds. "Little did I know that everything I said, everything I posted would be archived somewhere."

Over time, and more stories, Mohanraj started to get more and more interested in breaking the silences around sex. "I write about sex because it's about intimacy," she says. "People are different in bed than they are in the rest of their lives." She now describes most of her sex stories as "erotic parables" where "good sexual choices had happy endings while bad ones were punished."

What she found tricky in writing about sex, though, was not coming up with new plots for the old in-and-out but the words to describe them. "The language around sexuality is paltry," she says. "Words are either clinical or flowery or just crude."

She remembers the first time she got an erotic charge from the printed word. It was a young adult sci-fi novel about two marooned teenagers. "It went 'My thighs opened for him,' no further," she recalls. "But at 12, it was the hottest thing in the world."

When she started writing her own brand of erotica, Mohanraj found another problem. She says with embarrassment that in the early days only one out of 10 stories she wrote had brown characters.

That might, she speculates, have had something to do with the Polish American neighborhood she grew up in, where her she and her sister were the only brown kids in grammar school. Or could it be the way the children of many South Asian immigrants learned to compartmentalize their lives? Sex was part of the white American world you got to by sneaking out of your bedroom window at night while in front of the aunties you were a demure sari-clad pre-med student.

This brown-and-white tension has deep historical roots, says Mohanraj, who studied postcolonial fiction at the University of Utah. Some of the first English literature to come out of the Indian subcontinent was by Europeans such as Rudyard Kipling and E. M. Forster, who wrote as outsiders about their passages to India.

Next, the Empire struck back, says Mohanraj, as Asian writers like Salman Rushdie penned "a response to white people writing about South Asia." Then came new voices like Chitra Divakaruni, Bharati Mukherjee and Jhumpa Lahiri -- immigrant stories that have brought gender and women's place in cultures into much sharper focus. In the last few years, Mohanraj says, the conversation has gotten more interesting and more complex as South Asian writers tackle queer issues as well as writing about "interacting with other people of color."

But while writers like Mohanraj open up the conversation, the audience for books like hers is still largely middle-aged white women. According to Mohanraj, this means publishers don't always understand that writers like her might be writing about sexuality from a place of anger and frustration. "I think there is a bit of wish fulfillment there," says Mohanraj. "They [the white female audiences] imagine themselves as the exotic other, trapped in a complex arranged marriage."

In "Bodies in Motion," Mohanraj shakes up all these stereotypes about love and marriage, arranged or not. In one story, young Thayalan elopes with his first cousin Savitha the night she turns 18. In another story, Kuyila leaves her comfortable home in Massachusetts to willingly enter into an arranged marriage in Colombo with a man she has never met. Meanwhile, her great aunt in Sri Lanka chooses not to marry at all, instead scandalizing her neighbors by living with her old maid in a little house with only one bed.

Mohanraj wrote "Bodies" about two extended Sri Lankan clans (the book comes with a handy family tree) so she could have a big enough palette to explore the many different permutations without being bogged down with "one iconic family representing all of Sri Lanka."

She knows of young women packed off to South Asia to get married at 17. At the same time, she says that she also knows men in their late 30s who now wish they had gotten married 10 years ago. While one generation may have felt they had few choices, Mohanraj worries that around sex and marriage her generation is "faced with so many choices that they sometimes get paralyzed."

Mohanraj herself has been involved in an open relationship for many years with her partner Kevin, a mathematics professor in Chicago. While her family might not appreciate her postings on polyamory, they aren't matchmaking for her anymore.

But she realizes now that all that matchmaking is really a sort of preparatory course for a new world rather than the idle pastime of bored housewives. Before birth control, marriage was the only way to protect young women, she says.

"You are perceived at so much risk until you are married off, that there is all this impulse to protect you," she says. But once you are married off, a whole world of conversation about sexuality opens up from the erstwhile sexually tight-lipped aunties. "Once you are made safe, you have access to the information," she says. Information like what? "I don't know," she laughs. "I am not married."

While other writers have explored the angst around immigrants and marriage, and the struggle between generations, where Mohanraj really scores is the "exquisite" prose with which she describes sexual desire and college relationships, says author Pooja Makhijani, editor of "Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America." "She seems to really 'get' young adult sex and sexuality," says Makhijani, who like Mohanraj grew up on the East Coast with immigrant parents.

"Bodies in Motion" comes at a time when the proliferation of South Asian literature has also meant some of the burden of representation of minorities has been lifted.

Abha Dawesar, whose first book, "Miniplanner," was written in the voice of a white, bisexual Manhattan yuppie, agrees that this is an exciting time for writers like her and Mohanraj. Though the Kamasutra stereotypes are not completely banished, and there is still a tendency to push immigrant writers into a silk-and-spices formula, Dawesar says the sheer volume of work has meant that "there's been an enormous exposure to South Asian literature that promises our exit from exotic."

Mohanraj herself remembers how 10 years ago dinner-table conversation would stop dead when she told people she wrote erotica. "And then it would explode into a three-hour conversation about sex," she recalls. Now Borders and Barnes & Noble have entire sections on sex and sexuality. But she's still fascinated by how culture continues to spread myths about sex and how "we still find pleasure amidst tremendous constraints and difficult choices around sex."
But has all of this helped her break the silences around taboo topics with her parents? "No, it's not any easier to talk about these things. But at least they come to my readings now," she says. And then she adds with a chuckle: "I choose the less sexy stories."

Child Sex Tourism in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka campaign promotes ‘zero tolerance’ for child sex tourism
By Francis Mead

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, 13 July 2006 – Every year, over half a million tourists arrive in Sri Lanka drawn by its climate and coastline, and thousands of children, the majority of them boys, are lured into prostitution. Now, Sri Lanka has launched a two-year action plan to put an end to child sex tourism.

The ‘Zero Tolerance for Child Sex Tourism’ campaign – launched by Sri Lanka’s Tourist Board with support from UNICEF – targets tourists, children and teenagers as well as hotel keepers, journalists, families and community leaders.

“Sexual exploitation in tourism has become a totally unacceptable phenomenon worldwide and is reaching an alarming level,” said the head of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, Udaya Nanayakkara. “Quite often, child sex tourism is ignored and denied by many actors in the tourism industry. I am confident that we will be able to put a stop to the abuse of Sri Lankan children as a result of tourism.”

The ‘zero tolerance’ message has been broadcast across this island nation through TV and radio ads. Billboards, banners, car stickers, flyers and in-flight magazines are disseminating the message as well.

Helping children say ‘no’Young people like 16-year-old Ahamed Ritzvi are also part of a drive to mobilize local communities. "I’ve gone for workshops regarding child sex tourism. We gave all our ideas and recommendations on preventing it," he said.

Because marginalized children with little family supervision are the most vulnerable, campaign messages also focus on the need for vigilance by mothers. In addition, the campaign aims to generate greater awareness among vulnerable children themselves.

"We really hope that the children, boys and girls, are able to say ‘no’,” said UNICEF Sri Lanka’s Yasmin Haque. “And I think that’s key – that they feel safe in saying ‘no’ to being pulled into the sex industry.”

The legal penalty for the sexual exploitation of children here ranges from 5 to 20 years’ imprisonment. By increasing awareness and using the threat of heavy prison sentences, the campaign’s overall goal is to check the disturbing and growing tide of child sex tourism in Sri Lanka.
Sabine Dolan contributed to this story from New York.

Child Sex Tourism in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka campaign promotes ‘zero tolerance’ for child sex tourism
By Francis Mead
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, 13 July 2006 – Every year, over half a million tourists arrive in Sri Lanka drawn by its climate and coastline, and thousands of children, the majority of them boys, are lured into prostitution. Now, Sri Lanka has launched a two-year action plan to put an end to child sex tourism.
The ‘Zero Tolerance for Child Sex Tourism’ campaign – launched by Sri Lanka’s Tourist Board with support from UNICEF – targets tourists, children and teenagers as well as hotel keepers, journalists, families and community leaders.
“Sexual exploitation in tourism has become a totally unacceptable phenomenon worldwide and is reaching an alarming level,” said the head of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, Udaya Nanayakkara. “Quite often, child sex tourism is ignored and denied by many actors in the tourism industry. I am confident that we will be able to put a stop to the abuse of Sri Lankan children as a result of tourism.”
The ‘zero tolerance’ message has been broadcast across this island nation through TV and radio ads. Billboards, banners, car stickers, flyers and in-flight magazines are disseminating the message as well.
Helping children say ‘no’Young people like 16-year-old Ahamed Ritzvi are also part of a drive to mobilize local communities. "I’ve gone for workshops regarding child sex tourism. We gave all our ideas and recommendations on preventing it," he said.
Because marginalized children with little family supervision are the most vulnerable, campaign messages also focus on the need for vigilance by mothers. In addition, the campaign aims to generate greater awareness among vulnerable children themselves.
"We really hope that the children, boys and girls, are able to say ‘no’,” said UNICEF Sri Lanka’s Yasmin Haque. “And I think that’s key – that they feel safe in saying ‘no’ to being pulled into the sex industry.”
The legal penalty for the sexual exploitation of children here ranges from 5 to 20 years’ imprisonment. By increasing awareness and using the threat of heavy prison sentences, the campaign’s overall goal is to check the disturbing and growing tide of child sex tourism in Sri Lanka.
Sabine Dolan contributed to this story from New York.

Wild Life in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka had an abundance of wildlife in the 1800s. Villagers used to hunt animals like deer, sambur, buffalo, wild boar etc. for their consumption. However, during the middle of that century the government found that there was organized poaching by parties that came to the villages from outside and shot these animals including leopard for their skin and deer for antlers and meat, thereby reducing the animal population steadily.

In addition, the Britishers, who lived in this country, also indulged in hunting, which was one of their favorite sports. This further reduced the number of animals.

The government decided to enact, in 1872, an "Ordinance to prevent the wasteful destruction of buffaloes and game throughout the island". Game included deer, sambur and peafowl.
In 1894, a group of planters formed the Ceylon Game Protection Society. Their main objective was to assist the government to protect wildlife or game as it was then called. Game was only those animals that they hunted.

Their motive in starting this association was also selfish in that it helped to protect game, which they could later shoot with licences obtained from the government.

They also established Resident Sportsmen's Reserves, which were solely maintained for hunting by members of the association. Yala and Wilpattu were the first of such reserves. Today these are two of Sri Lanka's major national parks. Today Sri Lanka has 13% of its land area under protection for fauna and flora.

Depending on their objective, there are different types of protection offered to these areas such as Strict Nature Reserves, National Parks, Nature Reserves, Jungle Corridors and Sanctuaries. They cover all the ecological and climatic regions of the country.


Strict Nature Reserves
No human activities are allowed in these areas and they are protected as a pure natural ecosystem. Research work is allowed under strict supervision and strict guidelines.

National Parks
National Parks are the areas allowed for the public to see and study wildlife. However necessary rules and regulations are introduced to ensure the maximum protection to wildlife and their habitats.

Nature Reserves
Wildlife viewing and studying are not allowed in Nature Reserves. However scientific studies are encouraged under supervision. The Major difference in this category compared to Strict Nature Reserve is, in Nature Reserves traditional human activities are allowed to continue. But this right in not transferable.

Sanctuaries
Protection of the habitats and allowing human activities simultaneously done in the sanctuaries. Sanctuaries may include private lands too. Sanctuaries ensures the protection of wildlife which are outside the state land. It is not necessary to obtain a permit to enter into such areas. However the activities area regulated by the Flora and Fauna Protection Ordinance (FFPO)
The areas under this classification are
Anawilundhawa
Anuradhapura
Buddhangala
Chundikulam
Elahara-Girithale
Galpara Doopath- Ambalangoda
Galways Land
Honduwa Island
Horagolla
Kagagamuwa
Kahalla Pallekele
Kalamatiya
Katharagama
Kimbulwana Oya
Kokilay
Kudumbigala
Kurulu Kele(Kegalle)
Ma Imbulkanada-Nittambuwa
Madin Duwa
Madu Para
Madunagala
Mahakanadara Wewa
Minneriya-Girithale
Muthurajawela
Nimalawa
Padavi Wewa
Palle Malala
Paraputuwa Meheni
Pareithive Island
Polonnaruwa
Rawana Ella
Ridiyagama
Sagamam
Samanala
Seruwila-Alley
Sigiriya
Sorber (Big) Island
Sorber (Small) Island
Sri Jayawardhanapura Birds Sanctuery
Thangamaley
Thellwatta
Trincomalee
Vavunikulam
Victoriya Randenigala Rantambe
Weerawila
Welhilla Kagagilla
Welipara
Willpattu-North
Yoda Wewa

Mihintale Sanctuary

Size :999.6 hectares

The Mihintale Wildlife Sanctuary, which is believed to be the first sanctuary in the world, is today in a rather neglected state. There are no proper borders demarcating the sanctuary and no measures have been taken to protect its biodiversity. However, the Government has now taken steps to restore this sanctuary to its former state, in connection with the 2550th Buddha Jayanthi celebrations.

Buddhism has a strong link with trees and the environment, with the Buddha being born, attaining Enlightenment and Parinibbana(passing away), all under the shade of trees. By paying His gratitude to the bo tree, which helped Him attain Enlightenment, through the Animisa Lochana pooja, the Buddha displayed the importance of trees, to the whole world.

The first lesson on protecting animals and trees was given to the world by the Buddha. Through the first pansil 'Panathipatha Veramani Sikkhapadan Samadiyami', He showed the importance of protecting all living beings. In the Vana Ropa Sutra, the Buddha has explained the importance of planting trees and forests, and the benefits thus accruing.

In His sermons, the Buddha has said that the forests don't seek anything from us for their survival, while generously donating their produce for our benefit. Forests protect all living beings; they give shade to even those who cut them down.

Therefore, the Buddha can even be described as the world's first environmentalist. So it's opportune that we concentrate on the conservation of trees and animals in this 2550th Buddha Jayanthi year.

The link between Buddhism and the environment in our country grew even stronger with the arrival of Arahat Mahinda Thera in the third century BC. On this day, Sri Lanka's king, Devanampiya Tissa was deer-hunting in the jungles of Mihintale, Anuradhapura. The sight of the king pursuing a deer greeted Mahinda Thera on his arrival in Sri Lanka.
The Thera, who stopped the king in his tracks, preached to him that all mammals, birds and other creatures enjoy an equal right to live in this land, wherever they may want.
The land belongs to all the people and animals. The king is only the ruler and not the owner of this land, the Thera said. With that, Mahinda Thera advised King Devanampiya Tissa to designate Mihintale and the surrounding jungle areas as a sanctuary for wildlife.
Even the newly planted trees are under threat today.

Thus, the area became the first sanctuary, on a Poson Poya day in the third century BC. This fact has been accepted by all environmentalists and archaeologists, based on facts in the Mahavamsa and other available documentation.

According to the Director of the Biodiversity Unit of the Environment Ministry Dr. Gamini Gamage, a sellipi (stone inscription) found at Mihintale stablishes the fact that the king did command the people of the area not to kill animals or destroy trees in this area.
Going by all these facts which proves that this area was declared a sanctuary as far back as more than 2,200 years, and that to date there are no known records of other wildlife sanctuaries in the world, it would not be wrong to state that the Mihintale Sanctuary is not merely the oldest, but perhaps the first such sanctuary in the world.

May be it's time to look into this matter seriously and take necessary steps to declare it as the world's first wildlife sanctuary, if there are no other claims from other parts of the world.
However, legal protection for this sanctuary was granted only on May 27, 1938. It's on this day that the Anuradhapura Wildlife Sanctuary and Mihintale Sanctuary were gazetted by the Department of Wildlife Conservation.

The Anuradhapura sanctuary comprises 3,500.7 hectares or 8,750 acres. The Mahamevna Uyana, the sacred city, Atamasthana and Western part of Isurumuniya all came within this compound.

However, today, this area has been urbanised and many buildings have come up within the premises. Even the Mahamevna Uyana, where a few trees are still left, is also facing many threats.

Viharadhipathi, Ruwanveliseya, Pallegama Hemarathana Thera said: "The old trees in this compound are dying, and not enough new trees are being planted. Although some organisations carry out tree-planting ceremonies, they don't assign personnel to look after them. During the Poson season, some people even light hearths on the roots of trees , which also result in the dying of trees."

Atamasthanadhipathi, Pallegama Sirinivasa Thera said: "This area belongs to the world's first sanctuary. There may not be another place as archaeologically important as this. We must get together with government and private sector organisations to design a programme to protect this area."

The environmental pollution caused to this area, especially during the Poson season, is enormous. The Mahamevna Uyana, which consists of many trees such as palu, weera, mara and esathu bo, is today the kingdom of cattle and monkeys. Its conservation cannot be carried out only by the Wildlife Conservation Department or the Forest Department. A special task force with government backing is necessary in this regard.

The Mihintale Sanctuary is also a part of the area demarcated as the first sanctuary during the third century BC. It comprises 999.6 hectares or 2,500 acres.All the mountains and hills of Mihintale, the Kaludiya Pokuna, Mihindu Guhava, Ambasthala area and the Amba Vanaya, which belong to the Forest Department, come within this sanctuary.

It comprises trees such as palu, weera, burutha(teak), ebony and milla and mammals such as elephants, deer, sambhur and bears. Although the area is legally protected, due to various reasons, such protective measures are not properly enforced. There aren't even boards designating these two areas as the first sanctuary.

The protection granted today to the Anuradhapura and Mihintale sanctuaries is very low. Within these areas, unauthorised constructions and illegal land grabbing are very high. Hunting of deer and sambhur is especially high in the Mihintale sanctuary, say residents.

Mihintale Viharadhikari, Valahahenguna Weve Dhammarathana Thera said: "The protection granted to these areas today is not enough. There isn't even a single boundary for this area. Nobody has paid any attention to this for years. Killing of animals and burning of the forest go on unabated. The Wildlife Conservation Department cannot stop this. Everybody should get together to stop this destruction."

W.A. Sarath, the Wildlife Conservation Department official in charge of the Anuradhapura area, said that although their personnel are working tirelessly to protect these sanctuaries, a lot of legal problems have arisen due to the unclear boundaries of the area.

As a solution to all these problems, a programme has been designed by the Environment Ministry and Biodiversity Unit to conserve these sanctuaries in connection with the 2550th Buddha Jayanthi. Today (June 11) the area will be declared as a highly protected zone, and a monument too will be erected by the Ministry officials.

As a first step, the issue of their boundaries will be resolved. The Biodiversity Unit is also taking steps to name the area as the first sanctuary and to set up a special environmental monument there. Steps will then be taken to conserve and further enhance the biodiversity and environmental diversity of the area.

This project has given us an opportunity to display the glory of our culture and environment to the whole world. The Environment Ministry should be thanked for putting this plan, which would benefit both environmentalists and archaeologists, into action.

Source: Internet (Daily News)

Sinharaja Forest Reserve

Man and Biosphere:

The Sinharaja Forest Reserve, the best-known rainforest in Sri Lanka, is well worth a visit from anyone who is interested in the natural resources of this country. It has been declared a World Heritage Site, because of its unique and high biodiversity.
Sinharaja is also a Man and Biosphere Forest Reserve, and a large proportion of the flora in this forest is endemic to the country. Some species are endemic to the Sinharaja Forest itself. Sinharaja also has many species of endemic fauna.
Situated in the south-west lowland wet zone of Sri Lanka and falling into the Sabaragamuwa and Southern provinces, Sinharaja is surrounded by Napola Dola, Koskulana Ganga (north), Maha Dola, Gin Ganga (south-west), the Kalukandawa Ela, Kudawa Ganga (west), Beverley Tea Estate and Denuwa Kanda (east).

As a rainforest with its rich and complex diversity of vegetation, Sinharaja provides habitats for a variety of animals. Although dependent on plants for food, animals also carry out certain functions vital to the growth of some plants. Pollination and seed dispersal are two of these.

Sinharaja has two main forest types. One is the Dipterocarpus forests that occur in the valleys and on their lower slopes. Here almost pure stands of Hora (Dipterocarpus. Zeylanicus) and Bu Hora (Dipterocarpus. Hispidus) can be seen.

The other forest type is the secondary forest and scrub that now occurs where the original forest cover has been removed by shifting cultivation or other tree removal operations. In other places rubber and tea plantations have replaced the forest. Mesua-Doona (Shorea) forest, the climax vegetation over most of the reserve, covers the middle and upper slopes above 500m.
Sinharaja has the benefit of both monsoons. Rainfalls are regular during the south-west monsoons, May-July, the north-east monsoons and November-January, except February when the conditions are dry.

An IUCN - International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources - technical evaluation of Sinharaja states that 'Sinharaja is the last extensive primary lowland tropical rain forest in Sri Lanka. It holds a large number of endemic species of plants and animals, and a variety of plants of known benefit to man.

Sinharaja Forest Reserve is the last viable remnant of Sri Lanka's tropical lowland rain forest; over 60% of the trees are endemic and many of these are rare; and there are 21 endemic bird species, and a number of rare insects, reptiles and amphibians'. Endemism is high, particularly for birds with 19 (95%) of 21 species endemic to Sri Lanka present. Endemism among mammals and butterflies is also greater than 50%.

There is evidence that there have been elephants in parts of the Sinharaja and its surrounding forests. However, their numbers have gone down over time and now there are only a few animals on the Rakwana side of Sinharaja, especially in the Handapan Ella, Thangamalai and Deepdene areas. Before the logging project started in 1971, elephants were common in the periphery of the forest. They have not been seen in the western sector since 1974.

The other large mammals that are found in Sinharaja are the Leopard (Panthera pardus), Sambur (Cervus unicolor), Fishing Cat (Felis viverrina), Rusty Spotted Cat (Prionailurus rubiginosa), Barking Deer (Muntiacus muntjak), Mouse Deer (Tragulus meeminna). Jackal (Canis aureus) and Wild Boar (Sus scorfa).

The leopard is rarely seen but there is evidence of its presence through its scats (excreta). What is interesting is that the leopard here seems to eat crabs and small mollusks as well. There are no spotted Deer (Axis axis), which is one of its favoured prey, at this elevation. Therefore the adaptation to food resources that are available. The Purple-faced Langur (Presbytis senex) is an endemic. The only other primate found is the Toque or Rhesus Monkey (Macaca sinica) but it is seen mostly in the peripheral forests.

Of the smaller mammals there are a number of species in Sinharaja. The two Small Squirrels (Funambulus layardi and F. sublineatus), one Giant Squirrel (Ratufa macroura) the smaller Flying Squirrel (Petynomys fuscocapillus), the Badger Mongoose (Herpestes vitticolis), the Brown Mongoose (Herpestes fuscus), the Ring-tailed Civet (Viverricula indica), the Golden Palm Civet (Paradoxurus zeylonensis) and the Porcupine (Hystrix indica). The Otter (Lutra lutra) is also found in Sinharaja. There are also reports of sightings of the Pangolin (Manis crassicaudata.) but it is rare.

There are a number of rats, the Bandicoot, shrews and bats inhabiting this rainforest.
The larger mammals that are threatened are the leopard and the elephant. The present status of the leopard in Sinharaja has not been studied closely and therefore the population of leopards is not known. Even the exact population of elephants in Sinharaja is not known. Since it is a large animal and quite visible, it seems that only a few animals are left from the large number reported earlier.

Birds
Sinharaja hosts a variety of birds. Over 147 species have been recorded. This variety of species is possible because of the availability of specific habitats that range from 300 to 1500 meters. There are many endemic birds such as Ceylon Lorikeet ((Loriculus beryllinus), Layard's Parakeet (Psittacula calthropae), Ceylon Jungle Fowl (Gallus Lafayetti), Spur Fowl (Galloperdix bicalcarta), Ceylon White-headed Starling (Sturnus albofrontatus), Ceylon Wood Pigeon (Columba torringtoni), Grey Hornbill (Ocyceros gingalensis), Spotted-wing Thrush (Zoothera spiloptera), Rufous Babbler (Turdoides rufescens), Brown- capped Babbler (Pelleurneum fuscocapillum), Ashy-headed Laughing Thrush (Garrulax cinereifrons), Ceylon Blue Magpie (Cissa oronata), White Headed Starling (Sturnus albofrontatus), Green-billed Coucal (Centrophus chlororhynchus), Red-faced Malkoha (Phaenicophaeus pyrrhocephalus),Ceylon Hill Mynah or Grackle (Gracula ptilogenys) and Legge's Flowerpecker (Dicaeum vincens) are some of the endemic birds found at Sinharaja.

The Serendib Scops Owl (Otus thilohoffmanni) was discovered for the first time in 2001 by Deepal Warakagoda and Nanda Senanayake in the Sinharaja forest. Of interest is the presence of Sri Lanka Broad-billed Roller (Eurystomus orientalis), sightings of which have decreased markedly in recent years.

A regular sight at Sinharaja is the flocks of birds of mixed species that go through the forest. It is a mutual relationship observed among birds, a method by which they improve the availability of feed. The food of one species does not necessarily interest another.

Another interesting feature is that there are different groupings of bird species foraging at the different levels of the forest. There are different species moving in the canopy, sub canopy, undergrowth and forest floor. A team from Massachusetts, Colombo and Sabaragamuwa Universities studied this aspect of bird activity.
Reptiles

There are records of 21 species of snakes, including the Python (Python molurus), found in Sinharaja. Five species of lizard found in Sinharaja are the arboreal Green Forest Lizard (Calotes calotes), the high-pitched whistling Whistling Lizard (Calotes liolepis), the Hump-nosed Lizard (Lyiocephalus scutatus) with its gular fold, the Earless Lizard (Otriocephalus scutatus) and the Rough Horned Lizard (Cerataphora aspera). The rare Horned Lizard is restricted to parts of Sri Lanka's wet zone below 900m elevation.

The Water Monitor (Varanus monitor) is found in Sinharaja but the Land Monitor (Varanus bengalensis) has not been seen at this elevation.

Amphibia
There are many amphibians in this rain forest which provides an ideal habitat for them. Kelum Manamendra Arachchi, who has worked in Sinharaja for a long time says that 'Half the number of amphibians in Sri Lanka are found in Sinharaja and half of the endemic amphibians are also from this forest.'
Kelum and Rohan Pethiyagoda have found many new species of frogs at Sinharaja and are likely to find more. It is also extremely likely that many species of amphibians have become extinct even before they were known to man. Kelum and Rohan have put out a very well researched book in Sinhala on our amphibians.

Fish
Some threatened freshwater fish found in Sinharaja are Comb Tail (Belontia signata), Smooth-breasted Snakehead (Channa orientalis), Black Ruby Barb (Barbus nigrofasciatus), Cherry Barb (Barbus titeya) and Red-tailed Goby (Sicydium halei).

Plants
Sinharaja has a complex vegetation structure. This is the same as in an intricate rain forest ecosystem. At first glance, the forest seems to be a chaotic muddle of vegetation. However, a closer look reveals that the vegetation can be categorized on the basis of several factors such as life-forms (trees, shrubs, herbs and woody climbers), a strata or groups of plants living under similar conditions of light and moisture with each group having its own "life-style"
There are many 'layers' of the forest - the canopy, sub canopy, under-storey, shrub layer and ground layer. Then there are the vegetation types like, stranglers, epiphytes, parasites and saprophytes. Emergents are trees that grow above the canopy layer of the forest.
The trees that form the canopy, or top layer of trees, usually reach heights of around 30 to 45 meters. The canopy is well packed with tree crowns and is usually devoid of emergent trees. The second layer of trees is the under storey which consists of trees that are not so tall. The shrubs make up the third layer of the complex forest vegetation.
Most plants can stand on their own in that they can get their nutrition made up of minerals from the soil and produce food using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide from the air. This process is called photosynthesis. There other plants that cannot stand on their own and are dependent on other hosts for food, water or support, like climbers, epiphytes and parasites.
The plants could either be photosynthetic, thus nutritionally self sufficient or non-photosynthetic like the saprophytes; some, on the other hand, are semi or totally parasitic. Semi parasites take water from hosts plants i.e. Loranthus - Pilila in Sinhala, - while a full parasites absorb both water and nutrients - Cuscuta - aga mula nathi wal in Sinhala.
Epiphytes, orchids for example, are plants that cannot stand by themselves but are not dependent on the host plant for their food. The real objective of an epiphyte is to climb on to a big tree and get more sunlight for food production. Parasites need a host plant and take their food off the host plant as well. Saprophytes are those types of plants that live on the juices of dead plant and animal matter.

Stranglers are plants that start off being dependent on other plants for support but later establish their own support and tend to be detrimental to the original host. A good example is, though not from Sinharaja, the Nuga (Ficus bengalaensis), which starts off as an epiphyte on a host plant but grows steadily and completely chokes up the host plant. It grows into a massive tree leaving no trace or evidence of what was its host plant. In a rain forest vines too can be stranglers.

The plants could also represent several stages of maturity e.g. seedlings, saplings, poles, etc. As expected, the variety of combinations that could exist in the forest can be enormous. These are the factors that form the basis of the vegetation structure of the forest.
A tree fall gap is a gap arising in the canopy due to the collapsing of an old tree. The thick canopy allows minimum sunlight to reach the ground level. Therefore seedlings and saplings wait for years on the forest floor before a gap appears .The moment it occurs, a hoard of young plants shoot up to take their place in the canopy. Tree fall gaps in Sinharaja have been studied by Yale University.

A variety of plants of known benefits to man are present in Sinharaja. One of which is the palm Kitul (Caryota urens) used to get jaggery, which is a substitute for sugar used widely in areas where this tree grows. Wewal (Calamus sp) is used in the cane industry, Cardamom (Elattaria ensal) a spice, Shorea sp. (for flour), dun Shorea sp. (for varnish and incense) and Weniwal (Coscinium fenestratum) for medicinal purposes, are used intensively by villagers. A list of 202 plants, together with their endemicity and uses has been drawn up.

Nimal and Savithri Gunatilleke in their many years of research in Sinharaja have found that of Sri Lanka's 830 endemic species, 217 trees and woody climbers are found in the lowland wet zone. Of these, 139 (64%) have been recorded in Sinharaja, 16 of which are considered to be rare.

Other rare endemics are the palm Loxococcus rupicola and Atalantia rotundifolia, the latter being restricted to Sinhagala at 742m. Of 217 recorded species of trees and woody climbers, 40% have low population densities (less than 10 or fewer individuals per 25ha) and 43% have restricted distributions, rendering them vulnerable to further encroachments into the reserve.
In1968, a government directive was issued to extract timber for the plywood sawmill and chipwood complex established at Kosgama. Logging was carried out from 1971 until 1977, when logging was banned, largely due to public pressure brought about by the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society, which played a leading role in the protests and objections to this indiscriminate logging of a very important and valuable natural resource.

At present, the reserve has 6,500-7,000ha of unlogged forest. Since 1977, the Forest Department has given high priority to protecting the reserve and in 1978 began planting (Pinus caribaea) along the periphery to establish a live boundary. More recently, betel nut palm (Areca catechu) has been used for this purpose.

In order to ensure the strict protection of the reserve for scientific and aesthetic reasons, a scheme of zonation and management is proposed for areas outside the reserve. The creation and propagation of essential forest products, for sustained utilisation, in areas outside the reserve is intended to meet local needs and thereby eliminate former dependence on resources within the reserve.

Of the many constraints to the protection of Sinharaja, encroaching cultivations are probably the biggest problem, particularly along the southern boundary. There are many socio-economic issues that need to be looked into. There are people and organisations in the immediate vicinity of the reserve, who are dependent of certain forest products for their livelihood. Alternate sources of these products have to be found for these people.

The most important traditional minor forest products used are Kitul, Cane and to a lesser degree medicinal plants.

These activities have now been restricted to forests surrounding the Sinharaja reserve. Illicit gem mining was once a serious problem in eastern parts of the reserve and was organised mostly by wealthy merchants from outside the Sinharaja region. This activity though reduced now has to be stopped completely.

The lack of a uniform land-use policy and the multiplicity of governmental and semi-governmental agencies involved in land-use planning in Sri Lanka are the major administrative constraints in evolving a suitable protection plan for Sinharaja. For the moment, transactions related to lands surrounding the reserve are suspended under presidential order until such time, as the conservation plan for the reserve is ready for implementation.
Jayantha JayawardanaDaily News -3 July 2006