Western Province households will be urged to put a little extra thought and trouble into dealing with their garbage – for the sake of the environment. Homes will be requested to separate perishable and non-recyclable waste from the rest of their garbage. At present, all solid waste generated in households is disposed of in the same way, by dumping, and ...
By Malaka Rodrigo. A tarantula almost as big as a dinner plate has been discovered in northern Sri Lanka by a team of researchers who named it after a keen police officer who helped track down live specimens of the giant spider. �The researchers fortuitously happened to be in Mankulam, conducting an island-wide tarantula survey, when a local villager gave ...
A landmark discovery by a Sri Lankan scientist could save thousands of lives lost through snakebite the world over. A snakebite victim’s life often hangs in the balance in the minutes during which doctors watch for symptoms of poisoning before injecting the person with anti-venom as the remedy itself could cause severe allergic reactions that can cause immediate death. Not every snakebite ...
An attempt by villagers and wildlife enthusiasts to save a rare fish from extinction is a rare ray of hope amid the gloom of the gradual loss of biodiversity. Last week, ignoring blood-sucking leeches, dozens of volunteers got their hands dirty and pants wet on the muddy banks of the Galapitamada stream, known to be the only habitat of the ...
Considered one of the oldest organisms on earth, there are some 600 species of lichen in Sri Lanka – By Malaka Rodrigo Two new lichen species have been discovered at Horton Plains by botanists. Scientifically named Anzia mahaeliyensis and Anzia flavotenuis, these will upgrade the endemic checklist of Sri Lankan Lichens. A field study on lichen diversity in ...
Cries all night from the jungle alerted villagers..!! Hearing a baby elephant’s cries from the forest all Tuesday night, villagers called wildlife officials who thwarted an attempt to snatch the baby from the wild and sell it into captivity in private hands. The officers had been expecting to find the elephant injured from an accident but instead found it tightly ...
Today, February 10, marks the dawning of the Chinese New Year, and this year is the Year of the Snake. While billions of Chinese will be thinking about the Snake and its zodiacal impact on their lives over the next 12 months, environmentalists here are thinking of the snake and its survival in Sri Lanka, even as new undescribed species ...
By Malaka Rodrigo in Tokyo the United Nations predicting that the world will need 40 per cent more water and 50 per cent more energy some 15 years from now, World Water Day’s theme of “Water and Energy” Friday was right on target, very much so for Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is hoping to increase its reliance on hydro-power but ...
The Wilpattu game reserve was recently named Sri Lanka’s sixth Ramsar Wetland, a name give to ecologically significant wetlands around the world. The Ramsar Convention, to which Sri Lanka is a signatory, is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands. Bundala was Sri Lanka’s first Ramsar wetland, followed by Anawilundawa, Madu Ganga, Kumana and the Vankalai ...
Today morning (17th.May) the National Trust Sri Lanka (NTSL) conducted a Tour of Trees in Colombo making the participants aware of the varied selection of large trees that are hardly noticed within the city environment. Though urbanized, Colombo still has lots of large trees where some of them are over 100 years. Vihara Maha Devi Park (formerly Victoria Park) and its suburban ...
Sri Lanka enjoys many wildlife spectaculars, including the phenomenon of the annual mass migration of hundreds of thousands of seabirds. “August-September is the best time to observe the great mass migration of seabirds. During the peak in September as many as 3,000-4,000 bridled terns (Sterna anaethetus) fly southwards within sight of shore in one hour,” reveals Rex I. De Silva who ...
As the world celebrated World Oceans Day on June 8, environmentalists here are concerned about a rapidly growing coral-eating startfish, in the East coast. Marine naturalist Prasanna Weerakkody issued this warning after spotting an increased population of the Crown of Thorn Starfish in certain areas of the Coral Reef in Pigeion Island, in Trincomalee. The Crown of Thorn Starfish (COT) ...
Indispensable to mankind’s food chain, extinction of the bee would cause widespread famines leading to starvation en masse By Malaka Rodrigo The Nelum Pokuna which has been opened few months back has recently troubled by residents came uninvited. These were the Bambaras known as Giant Honeybee or Apis dorsata scientifically. The Bambaras visited Nelum Pokuna few weeks back and build ...
Real threats lie in so-called developers with zero concern for the environment. Malaka Rodrigo reports Sri Lanka’s “green economy” should never be threatened or compromised by industrial, infrastructure or development programmes, says an environment expert. A green economy embraces anything that contributes to the wellbeing of a country’s environment, Dr. Sunimal Jayathunga, an environment expert, told the Sunday Times. ...
The popular edible fish known to local fishermen as “modha” or “koduwa”, and recently declared endemic to Sri Lanka, has been given a scientific name with a local flavour – Lates lakdiva. In an article that appeared last week in the scientific journal Zootaxa, Sri Lankan scientist Rohan Pethiyagoda has established that the koduwa is a marine species, not a ...
The Young Zoologists’ Association (YZA) celebrates their 40th anniversary with their annual painting exhibition By Malaka Rodrigo A whole new digital world prompts many to take up the camera and shoot the wild. Exhibitions of wildlife photographs are quite common these days, but not so exhibitions of wildlife paintings. However keeping to their aim of promoting wildlife arts, the ...
Two people were fined Rs. 43,000 last week by the Colombo Magistrate, for the unsafe transport of an elephant calf belonging to the Devramwehera Raja Maha Vihara. The mahout and the driver pleaded guilty to the charges of transporting this elephant calf without proper permits and in an unsafe manner. It was an offence to [...]
Environment professionals should never compromise their principles or yield to forces that do not have the environment’s best interests at heart. Former Sri Lanka Tourism Board chairman Renton de Alwis made this comment at this week’s annual general meeting of the Institute of Environmental Professionals. Mr. de Alwis stressed the importance of the Environmental Impact [...] ...
After several days of waiting the wildlife officers captured the crocodile from Nilwala river at Malimbada. The croc is 11 ft long and captured closer to the place a school girl was killed by a killer croc. The wildlife officers believes the crocodile could be the same that had attacked the girl, but also on the look for other ...
An alleged killer crocodile captured with great difficulty by a wildlife team is rejected by the Dehiwala Zoo and finally released into the Yala National Park – Malaka Rodrigo reports from Matara A 12.2-foot male saltwater crocodile, the reptile believed to have killed an 18-year-old Matara schoolgirl, was captured last Sunday (April 15) by a team of young environmentalists ...
