Features

Are children losing appreciation and contact with natural world?

Published

5 years ago

2021/11/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

By Douglas M King, Ph. D

Teacher, consultant, author in Early Childhood Education

douglasking1939@yahoo.com

Nineteenth century psychologist Herbert Spencer published his book, in which he theorised the “surplus energy theory,” that the main reason for children’s play is to get rid of surplus energy. Playgrounds were for physical play, where children ‘burn off steam,’ and not for the other domains of development or for learning. Most playgrounds typically have conventional manufactured play equipment, and often are devoid of nature and vegetation and more likely to be grey rather than green and where there is neither shade, shelter nor opportunities to interact with nature. Playground designs often lack understanding of how quality outdoor play environments can provide children with rich educational opportunities, particularly in the area of social skills and environmental learning.

Modern humans evolved and have lived in intimate contact with nature, in the savannahs and forests, for almost their entire history. The cultivation of plants and the domestication of animals allowed our ancestors to dwell in permanent settlements, to expand their population more rapidly, and become divorced from nature. Only more recently have most people lived in urban areas although still with some contact to nature.

Two hundred years ago or in more recent times, most children spent their days surrounded by fields, farms or in the wild nature, at its edges. But even as recently as 50 years ago, children had access to nature spending much of their time outdoors, using the sidewalks, streets, playgrounds, parks, greenways, vacant lots and other spaces “left over” during the urbanisation process or the fields, forests, streams and parks of suburbia. Children had the freedom to play, explore and interact with the natural world, with little or no restriction or supervision.

Children today have few opportunities for outdoor free play and regular contact with the natural world. Their physical boundaries have shrunk for many reasons. A ‘culture of fear’ and ‘stranger danger,’ has parents concerned for their children’s physical and social safety. Fears of ultraviolet rays, insect-borne diseases and various forms of pollution add to the reasons for adults to keep children indoors. Furthermore, children’s lives have become structured and scheduled by adults, who hold the mistaken belief that success in education is the only path to become more successful as adults.

The culture of childhood, with natural play outside, is gone and children’s everyday life has shifted to the indoors, and as a result children’s opportunity for direct and spontaneous contact with nature is a vanishing experience of childhood. This breeds apathy towards environmental concerns and knowledge. Children’s play environments have dramatically changed in the last few decades, but also the time children have to play has decreased by at least 25% and the time they spent in school increased by almost 25%.

With children’s lives disconnected from the natural world, their experiences are influenced in media, written language and visual images. The virtual is replacing the real by TV, nature documentaries, National Geographic and other nature TV channels as well as environmental fundraising appeals that condition children to think that nature is in far-away places they will never experience, Children are losing the understanding that nature can exist in their own environment, and they grow up with limited knowledge and appreciation of the natural world.

With children’s access to the outdoors and the natural world becoming increasingly limited, or nonexistent, childcare, kindergarten and schools, where children can spend 40 to 50 hours per week, may be the last opportunity to reconnect children with the natural world and create a future generation that values and preserves nature. Many leading educators agree that positive attitudes towards the natural environment develops during early and middle childhood and requires regular interaction with nearby nature. It may be that if children don’t develop a sense of respect and caring for the natural environment, during their early years, they risk never developing such attitudes.

Much environmental education approaches from an adult’s, rather than a child’s perspective. Children’s curiosity with the natural world, and the unique way of knowing, requires discovery and exploratory learning, often referred to as hands on, rather than a didactic approach. Most environmental education teaches children too abstractly, and at too early of an age about concepts, like rainforest destruction, acid rain, ozone holes and whale hunting which is difficult for them to comprehend and so tune out and develop a vagueness to the issues. Fact full knowledge, devoid of interest, will not stick. But if interest comes first, knowledge is sure to follow. Environmental education programmes for young children that tries to impart knowledge and responsibility is futile before children have been allowed to develop a close relationship with the earth where nature itself is children’s best teacher. It is important, during the preschool years, to help children discover the child’s natural sense of themselves in relation to the natural world. Human evolution in the natural world, according to some experts, possess nature-based genetic coding and instincts, and children are born with a natural sense of relatedness to nature. Children love stories of fairy tales set in nature and populated by animal characters.

Children’s development with little or no regular contact with the natural environment is a process of socialisation by which children come to see themselves as separate and not a part of the natural world. Developing children’s understanding and experience should be the main natural world objective for children in the early years when children form the values, attitudes, and basic orientation toward the world that they will carry with them throughout their lives. Young children are implicitly drawn to animals and especially baby animals, and they are an endless source of wonder for children, fostering a caring attitude and sense of responsibility towards living things. Children interact instinctively and naturally with animals, talk to them, and invest in them emotionally. Animals constitute a high percentage of the characters employed in language acquisition and counting in children’s preschool books.

There is a growing movement in some developed countries to transform playground design in preschool and kindergarten settings from barren areas of grass, asphalt, and manufactured equipment into naturalised environments for children’s play, exploration and discovery. Adventure playgrounds, using natural materials, sand and water and gardens for growing flowers, vegetables, and plants, are examples of early childhood playground design. These new naturalised play environments do not depend on manufactured equipment. Rather they use the landscape and its vegetation and materials as both the play setting and the play materials. Naturalised playgrounds are designed from a child’s perspective as informal, even wild, and as a place that responds to children’s development tasks and their need to interact with nature and stimulate children’s natural curiosity, imagination and wonder. They need to experience the changing seasons, wind, light, sounds and weather and enjoy natural places to sit in, on, under, lean against, climb and provide shelter and shade.

In addition to the opportunities for children to develop an environmental ethic through regular contact with nature, natural environments offer children many additional benefits and the natural environment has positive effects on the well-being of adults, including better psychological well-being, superior cognitive functioning, fewer physical ailments and speedier recovery from illness. Teachers have found that children with symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are better able to concentrate after contact with nature. It is also possible that children with views of and contact with nature score higher on tests of concentration and self-discipline, show more advanced physical fitness, including coordination, balance and agility, and are sick less often. When children play in natural environments, their play is more diverse with imaginative and creative play that fosters language and collaborative skills. Exposure to natural environments can improve children’s awareness, reasoning and observational skills. It can also buffer the impact of life stress on children and helps them deal with adversity. The greater the amount of exposure, the greater the benefits. Play in a diverse natural environment helps to reduce antisocial behaviour, such as violence, bullying, vandalism and littering. Natural outdoor environments help children develop powers of observation and creativity and away from a world of technology and help to develop children’s independence and autonomy.

Outdoor play and experience in all its variety can greatly benefit children and society. The ability to grow and learn to their fullest in their unique experiential way is through the joy of exploration and discovery in the natural world. But, perhaps, even more important, naturalised playgrounds and positive exposure to natural environments offer the hope that children will develop the environmental values to become the future stewards of the Earth who will preserve the diversity and wonder of Nature.

It is of positive interest to note that the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kandy is developing a Children’s Educational Centre, which will include many of the features and ideas expressed in this article.

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Features

US’ anti-migrant stance set to intensify tensions in Western camp

Published

14 hours ago

2026/06/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

Migrant boats land on Western beaches. Credit: PA

The announcement by the US authorities of an anti-migrant stance during a recent commemoration in France of the epochal D-Day Landings of June 6, 1944, ought to strike impartial observers as a supreme irony. Whereas what should have been expected was a vibrant celebration of the beginning of the process of Western Europe freeing itself decisively from Nazi or fascist control during the crucial stages of World War Two, this was not to be.

What the world heard instead was a call to contemporary Western Europe to arm itself against a seemingly rising and threatening migrant presence in the region. In other words, the migrant must be despised and ‘shown the door’.

Instead of a commemoration that rejoiced in the flourishing of liberal democracy and its values what one got was a strong affirmation of fascism and racial chauvinism. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vented his spleen against the migrant or foreigner presence in Europe reportedly thus: ‘Sadly today different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies.’ To ‘beaches in Spain and Italy and Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion?’

While at the outbreak of World War Two it was Nazi Germany that was doing the invading and bringing some principal European countries under its suzerainty, this time around we are being given to understand that it’s migrants to the West who are seeking to colonize the latter. It goes without saying that such inflammatory rhetoric would have the deleterious effect of keeping racial tensions alive in the West and jeopardize all possibilities of the countries concerned cementing and maintaining social stability.

The Trump administration gives the impression of taking a leaf from the politically underdeveloped regions of the South to keep the US polity stable and united. In South Asia, for instance, we are not short of ambitious demagogues who use what is referred to as the ‘race card’ to gather unto themselves a following and thereby further their political fortunes. By seeking to stir and sustain anti-migrant hysteria, the Trump administration is also essentially replicating Nazi Germany’s policy of anti-Semitism. That is, fascism is very much alive in the US under President Trump.

Such efforts at churning racial hysteria at this juncture in the US should not come as a surprise. For all intents and purposes, the Trump administration is nowhere near achieving its aims in West Asia, for instance, in the short term. It has failed to bring Iran down to its knees, as it hoped to do, but is adopting the expedient of keeping the world guessing and confused on what it is doing in the region, since it cannot withdraw from the theatre in a hurry without losing face.

While perhaps working out an escape strategy the Trump administration it seems, is hoping to maintain its following at home intact and silent by playing on their racial biases and insecurities. Hence, the anti-foreigner campaign.

Simultaneously, the Trump administration will need to keep a close eye on how economic pressures on the domestic front are panning out. Anti-administration sentiments first break to the surface at meal tables. On this score, the news cannot be good because the average US family’s spending power ought to be shrinking on account of rising energy and oil prices. Consequently, it would not be a bad idea to keep the attention of the US consumer diverted by adeptly playing ‘the race card’; once again, lessons from intellectually bankrupt Southern politicians are coming in handy.

To be sure such comparisons many politicians in vibrantly democratic countries would find quite unflattering. But the stark truth is that racism cannot be tolerated in civilized societies and those politicians who resort to it risk being branded as racists of the first degree. In fact they could be seen as being on par with the likes of German dictator Adolph Hitler and his close collaborators.

However, on the question of migrant policy the Trump administration would likely be at polar opposites with the most vibrant of liberal democracies of the West. This will be the case with the UK, France and Italy for instance. The latter continue to keep their doors open to legal migrants and they are likely to view a virtual blanket ban on migrants as reprehensible.

Moreover, in the foremost democracies of the West debates are vibrantly ongoing on the need to keep racism or any hint of it completely outlawed in the public plane. There is the case of the UK, for instance, where the authorities continue to emphatically pinpoint their adherence to the principle of anti-racism in the conduct of public affairs.

One proof of the above was the parliamentary debate relating to the killing of 18-year-old Henry Nowak in Southampton. Police handling of the victim came in for sharp scrutiny by particularly the opposition in the House of Commons but there seemed to be a consensus over the main political divide that the matter should not be politicized.

Moreover, the UK authorities stressed in the House the government’s strict adherence to the policy of non-racism. It was also pointed out that British institutions set up to manage racism at the national, county and neighbourhood levels, for example, were very much intact. In fact, Sri Lanka could gain considerably by studying and implementing locally, legislation modeled on the relevant UK laws if it is in earnest when it speaks of ‘reconciliation’.

Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that Western Europe would ‘cave in’, so to speak, to US pressure on issues related to migration. The liberal democracies of Western Europe in particular would remain for the foreseeable future migrant-welcoming, multi-ethnic and plural democracies.

Nor is it likely that Western Europe would be passively receptive to US demands that it drastically increases its defense spending to meet the latter’s aims. Within the Western fold the EU is remaining committed to backing Ukraine, for instance, in its ongoing armed resistance to the Russian invasion and it is not giving any indication of being deferent to US pressure.

However, although tensions would continue to bristle within US-Western Europe relations on the above and numerous other matters of contention it would be far too premature to announce a parting of company between the two sections of the West. In that sense, the post-World War Two order remains essentially intact. There are still many things in common between the two, particular on the economic plane, that will ensure the continuance of the partnership.

Features

A decade among Yala’s ghosts of gold

Published

14 hours ago

2026/06/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

YM75 "James" surveys his territory from a tree-top vantage point, demonstrating the leopard's commanding presence in the landscape.

The first rays of dawn creep over the ancient rocks of Yala. The Indian Ocean glimmers in the distance, and the wilderness slowly awakens. Somewhere amid the scrub jungle, a pair of amber eyes scans the landscape.

For wildlife conservationist and leopard researcher Milinda Wattegedara, moments such as these have defined more than a decade of dedication to one of Sri Lanka’s most iconic creatures—the Sri Lankan leopard.

What began as fascination evolved into a remarkable conservation journey that has transformed the understanding of Yala’s leopard population and placed Sri Lanka firmly on the global wildlife research map.

“Long before I ever lifted a camera, leopards had already captured my imagination,” says Wattegedara. “What fascinated me was not merely their beauty but the complexity of their lives—their hunting strategies, movements, reproductive behaviour and their remarkable ability to adapt to changing environments.”

That fascination led to the birth of the Yala Leopard Diary in 2013, an ambitious long-term project dedicated to documenting individual leopards and unraveling the mysteries surrounding their lives.

For many visitors, a leopard sighting is a fleeting thrill. For Wattegedara and his team, every encounter is a chapter in an ongoing scientific story.

“Each photograph was never the end of an encounter,” he explains. “It was the beginning of deeper questions. How did a particular leopard use the landscape? How did its behaviour change with the seasons? What environmental pressures shaped its decisions?”

These questions drove years of meticulous fieldwork. Every sighting was carefully recorded with details including location, habitat, behaviour, date and time. Photographs were analysed to identify individual animals through unique spot patterns, allowing researchers to distinguish one leopard from another with remarkable accuracy.

What followed was groundbreaking.

YF77 “Shelly” pauses in quiet observation, embodying the alertness
and grace that define Yala’s leopard population.

From 2013 to 2026, the Yala Leopard Diary identified an astonishing 189 individual leopards within the Yala Block 1. The research revealed a leopard density of approximately 0.524 leopards per square kilometre, making Yala one of the highest leopard-density landscapes ever recorded anywhere in the world.

Such findings have elevated Yala’s status among global wildlife researchers.

Nestled between the Indian Ocean and a mosaic of habitats, ranging from rocky outcrops to dense scrub forests, Yala offers an ecological stage unlike any other.

Here, leopards are photographed silhouetted against ocean horizons, perched atop ancient granite formations, resting on tree branches and stalking prey across sunlit grasslands.

The images tell stories of extraordinary lives.

There is Haminee, a devoted mother navigating the challenges of raising cubs in a competitive landscape. There is Lucas, one of Yala’s most frequently documented males, striding confidently across the Gonalabba Plains with the vast ocean forming an unforgettable backdrop.

There is Ruki demonstrating the species’ incredible strength by hoisting prey onto branches, and Shelly, quietly surveying her surroundings in a moment of feline vigilance.

Together, these individuals have become familiar characters in a living wilderness drama.

YM31 “Ruki” secures prey on a branch, illustrating the remarkable strength and coordination of the Sri Lankan leopard.

Recognising the immense value of long-term documentation, Wattegedara joined forces with fellow researchers Dushyantha Silva, Raveendra Siriwardana and Mevan Piyasena to establish the Yala Leopard Centre in 2020.

Located at the Palatupana entrance to the Yala National Park, the centre is believed to be the world’s first information facility dedicated exclusively to leopards.

“The centre serves as a repository of knowledge, accumulated through years of observation and research,” Wattegedara says. “Our goal is to connect visitors with the science behind conservation and foster a deeper appreciation of these magnificent animals.”

The project’s impact extends far beyond Sri Lanka’s borders.

Research arising from the Yala Leopard Diary has been published in internationally recognised scientific journals. One study introduced an innovative framework for identifying individual leopards, while another documented an extraordinary and previously unrecorded case of a leopard cub being consecutively adopted by two different adult females—first a relative and later an unrelated leopardess.

The discovery attracted international scientific attention and highlighted the complexity of leopard social behaviour.

Yet for Wattegedara, the most important lesson remains one of humility.

“One conclusion has become increasingly clear,” he reflects. “Our understanding of these leopards remains far from complete. We are only beginning to understand how they live, adapt and persist in one of Sri Lanka’s most dynamic protected landscapes.”

YF15 “Hope” descends Rukvila Rock at dawn, showcasing the agility and adaptability of Yala’s leopards.

His words underscore an essential conservation truth: the more we learn about nature, the more mysteries emerge.

As Sri Lanka navigates growing environmental challenges, the Yala Leopard Diary stands as a shining example of what sustained observation, scientific curiosity and public engagement can achieve.

Beyond the stunning photographs and remarkable sightings lies something even more valuable—a growing body of knowledge capable of informing future conservation decisions and ensuring that future generations inherit a wilderness where leopards continue to roam free.

For more than a decade, Wattegedara and his colleagues have followed the tracks of Yala’s elusive predators through dust, rain and scorching heat.

Their work has revealed that every leopard has a story, every sighting has significance and every photograph can contribute to conservation.

And perhaps, most importantly, it has reminded us that the golden ghosts of Yala still have many secrets left to share.

By Ifham Nizam

Features

Glamour, music and community spirit …

Published

14 hours ago

2026/06/11

Sahan Weerasooriya

Sri Lankans are quite active, all around the globe.

News has just come my way, from Glasgow, in Scotland, where the glamour of masks, music, dancing, and community spirit, came together, in spectacular fashion, at Masquerade Night, bringing together members of the Sri Lankan community for an evening filled with music, fashion, food and entertainment.

Organised by Mahesh Balaaratchi (DJ Mowgli) together with Sulochana Asmone, Hiroshini, Prasad, Ashi, and Shawn, the evening provided guests with an opportunity to socialise, enjoy live entertainment, and celebrate in a unique and elegant setting.

Guests arrived from 6:00 pm, dressed in formal attire and decorative masks, creating a colourful and vibrant atmosphere throughout the venue.

DJ Mowgli: The main
organiser of
Masquerade Night

There was a delicious selection of Sri Lankan cuisine and street food, which proved popular throughout the evening.

The buffet offered a variety of traditional favourites, giving attendees a taste of home while adding to the festive atmosphere.

Entertainment was provided by DJ Mowgli, whose performance kept the audience engaged throughout the night. His playlist featured a mixture of popular favourites, dance classics, and cultural music, remixed for a younger generation.

One of the highlights of the evening was the Baila session, which brought a distinctly Sri Lankan flavour to the event.

The Baila segment highlighted the importance of preserving and celebrating cultural traditions, while bringing people together through music and dance.

As familiar rhythms filled the room, guests enthusiastically took to the dance floor, creating one of the most memorable moments of the night.

The crowd was described as lively, energetic, and welcoming, with attendees embracing the spirit of the masquerade theme while enjoying the opportunity to reconnect with friends and meet new people. The family-friendly atmosphere ensured that guests of all ages could take part in the celebrations.