Ifham Nizam interviews Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, lead author and photographer of ‘A Photographic Guide to the Wildlife of Sri Lanka’ published by John Beaufoy Publishing.

Q: What first inspired your interest in natural history and biodiversity, particularly in Sri Lanka?

A:From the age of three, I was on Leopard Safari with my uncle Dodwell de Silva in Wilpattu and Yala. He was also a birdwatcher and used to bring with him a copy of G. M. Henry’s ‘A Guide to the Birds of Ceylon’ which was first published in 1955. I learnt from him to identify birds and to put a name to them. When I was around thirteen years old, I began to roam around Colombo with my neighbour Azly Nazeem and his classmate Jeevan William. I realised that some of the birds I knew from Yala and Wilpattu such as the Red-wattled Lapwing and the Indian Roller could be seen even in Colombo. It dawned on me I did not have to wait for trips out of Colombo to enjoy wildlife.

My parents Laskhmi and Dalton encouraged my interest in wildlife and used to give me wildlife books as presents for my birthday and Christmas. Sri Lanka in the 1970s and early 1980s was a poor country and even then I realised that I was in a privileged position to receive books like this. Most of the books had been published abroad and I read about rainforests. Thilo Hoffmann with the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society published a booklet about the need to save Sinharaja Rainforest from being logged. I was gobsmacked to learn that Sri Lanka had rainforests. Back then none of my friends and family believed me when I said that Sri Lanka has rainforests.

I was probably the only person in the whole school amongst students and teachers who had woken up to this. It shows the lack of awareness then. Everyone thought rainforests were something found in the Amazon. When I was fifteen with a handful of friends including Jeevan William, Lester Perera and Senaka Jayasuriya we trekked across Sinharaja. The Forest Department insisted we brought letters of permission from the school and parents.

They had at that time never had any school children wanting to trek across Sinharaja. By now I had realised that I had a deep love to learn about the wildlife around me in Colombo and in Sri Lanka. I began to attend meetings of the WNPS, March for Conservation (MFC), Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka (FOGSL) and the Sri Lanka Natural History Society (SLNHS) and began to learn a lot from a bunch of inspirational people. The learning continues today.

Pied Cuckoo, Buttuwa

Q: About your transition from a career in finance to becoming one of Sri Lanka’s leading naturalists?

A: There are many people who deserve the credit for this. Everything I know is what I learnt from someone else. The foundation was laid by my uncle Dodwell getting me interested and my parents and siblings who supported me. The friends and organisations I mentioned earlier allowed me to go into the field and join a group of people who could nurture my interest. The involvement of some people is not so obvious, but they played a key role.

Mr. Lokanathan the scout master in school realised I had potential and put me into leadership roles so that I could develop my self-confidence, people skills and be confident leading small field expeditions. George Ondaatje, an Advanced Level Physics teacher, taught me how to think critically. I went over to London to study Civil Engineering. I then qualified as a Chartered Accountant and then began to spend every week-end on field meetings organised by the London Natural History Society (LNHS) and the London Wildlife Trust (LWT) and local groups of the RSPB.

I did not realise it then but I was honing my skills as a naturalist and photographer and my city job was training me to look at things through a business lens. In 1996, I approached the Oriental Bird Club to ask if they would like to do a feature on the wildlife art of Lester Perera.

They made a counter offer. They would publish his art to illustrate ‘A Birdwatcher’s Guide to Sri Lanka’ if I could write in to complement what they had already published on India, Malaysia and Indonesia. I lead-authored this and the Sri Lanka Tourism industry were pleasantly surprised to learn that someone working in the financial sector in London was publicising Sri Lanka as a bird watching destination. I began to engage with people in Sri Lankan tourism.

The scene was set. I had by now acquired a fairly well-rounded set of skills to publicise Sri Lanka as a wildlife destination. But it needed two people to set things in motion. Firstly, my wife Nirma decided that after the birth of our first daughter Maya that we will return to Sri Lanka so that grandparents and grandchildren will have time together. I was not pleased. I was happy in London and my career was on a good trajectory.

Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne

But Nirma spoke to various people in Colombo and lined up job interviews and I found myself being a part of the management team set up to launch Nations Trust Bank. The next big step came when Hiran Cooray came home for dinner and suggested that I join Jetwing to set up a wildlife travel company as well as to develop the wildlife tourism potential of Jetwing Hotels. I agreed on the condition that I could implement some of the activities undertaken by UK conservation NGOs through the private sector, as we could integrate support for research and conservation into a business model.

So much to the surprise and initial dismay of many of the Jetwing senior team I joined Jetwing. They wondered what someone from the UK financial services industry could bring to one of the largest tourism companies. They wondered if it had been a mistake to bring me in and when I started talking about how Sri Lanka could become a big game safari destination for animals like Leopards, they were convinced I was a mad hatter.

They were incredulous. Leopards? Many of the senior team had been in tourism for about 25 years each and no one had mentioned leopards as a tourism product. Surely Hiran would now realise this was all a terrible mistake and send the mad man back to London to work in the city. Anyway, it’s another story, but the team at Jetwing soon realised that I had something useful to add and it was totally embraced. Before long, the sceptics became my allies. They remain as good friends to this day. Ifham, you were one of the first in the media to realise that I was a new voice in tourism and I believe you did the first press interview of me.

Q: Could you share the inspiration behind your latest book? What new elements or approaches did you introduce in this book?

A: In the early 2000s, I began a series of photographic leaflets and booklets with Jetwing Eco Holidays so that a wide range of people could have affordable literature to identify birds, mammals, butterflies, dragonflies etc. Some of these were sold for as little as one hundred rupees and made a huge impact as before the identification books available were very expensive, rare books and out of the reach of many people.

Publishers such as New Holland and John Beaufoy Publishing allowed me to develop the publications a stage further by commissioning me to produce affordable and portable photographic guides. These were important stepping stones.

Having seen photographic guides to multiple taxonomic groups it was always on the back of my mind to develop one for Sri Lanka. This book is not the first of this genre for Sri Lanka. FOGSL published books about the Talangama Wetland and Uda Walawe National Park, which were on this multi-taxonomic group theme. However, this book is the first in Sri Lanka to cover the popular taxonomic groups in good enough detail for field use when travelling around Sri Lanka. A key element in this book is that I invited 13 other section contributors to accelerate the publication timetable for this book. If I had tried to do it all by myself, we would still be waiting.

Q: How did you choose other authors featured in the book? Were there any that you found particularly challenging or rewarding to document?

A:I was aware of the work being done by others so it was easy for me to reach out to other authors who I knew had field experience and good images for writing sections that would be of interest to a natural history audience. There are a lot more people I could have brought in, and a lot more material I would have liked to have added. But the publisher did not want it become too big and expensive, an important consideration.

Q: Sri Lanka is known for its rich biodiversity. Could you discuss any conservation efforts you believe are crucial right now?

Firstly, we have to hold onto what we already have, these include what we know as Other State Forests. Secondly, we have to rehabilitate and restore damaged areas. Thirdly, we need to see how we can construct corridors for wildlife to move in-between forest patches. A useful idea put forward by Rohan Pethiyagoda is to re-wild the reservations beside our 105 river systems. We could also look at re-wilding a narrow belt beside our main roads and railways, where practicable.

We should also encourage landowners to make space for nature. This is not just the owners of big properties such as tourist hotels and factories to re-wild a part of their grounds. But even individual home owners can plant trees and shrubs which are friendly to native wildlife. In our city parks, we should plant groves of native dipterocarps so that people can understand what our land looked like a few hundred years ago.

Q: Are there any particular species or habitats in Sri Lanka that you feel are underappreciated or misunderstood by the public?

A: It’s a sad reality that very few Sri Lankans have had the opportunity to appreciate the wonder of a lowland rainforest. Even if they visited one, we don’t have enough trained people or the visitor education resources to do justice to what we have.

Until recently, wetlands were also under-appreciated. But with the beautification of Colombo and the actions of government agencies wetlands such as Diyasaru Wetland Park (Sri Lanka Land Reclamation and Development Corporation) and Beddegana Wetland Park (Urban Development Authority) are now being visited by many people for recreational activity as well as wildlife watching. Making it easy to use these sites for wedding shoots have been a game changer as not only do they bring in a lot of people they generate significant revenues to pay for their upkeep.

Q: What do you hope this book will achieve?

A: I hope it becomes the standard book which people will take with them into the field whether it is as a wildlife enthusiast or professional naturalist. I hope wildlife enthusiasts will start to widen the scope of what they look at. For professional naturalist guides I hope this book becomes a powerful tool which will help Sri Lanka to monetise its wildlife. When the country’s wildlife is aligned to its economic agenda, it becomes easier to make a case to conserve the country’s remaining wild spaces and the species within them. Unfortunately, this book won’t be within the reach of many people who work in wildlife and tourism. Therefore, in the book I have put in an appeal for foreign tourists to consider giving away their used copy to local people who may benefit from having it.

(To be continued)

Cassandra is totally in favour of the newly-appointed Cabinet of Ministers, particularly approving the continuation of Dr Harini A as PM and Minister of Education in its various levels, and appointing Vijitha Herath as Foreign Affairs Minister and Dr Nalinda Jayatissa in charge of Health and Mass Media. Especially joyful is the appointment of Saroja Savithri Paulraj as Minister of Women and Child Affairs. She has made history by being the first Tamil to be elected to Parliament from the Matara District and thus the Southern Province. This fact is highlighted with hope for the future of our country and shares honour with the Jaffna election results of electing majority Sinhalese.

Cass is an impressionable dame, emotional and easily carried away. In her vulnerable late teen years, she was in love for just a day or two, ignited via her auditory and visual senses, and confined within her for persons who were absolutely far removed. She bares her heart and exposes her stupidity by admitting she was mad over a Sinhala singer just listening to his songs. This was just for a day or two. With admiration she gazed at and adored Tenzing Norgay’s grinning face in newspapers in 1952. Enraged she was that bee keeper Edmund Hillary bagged honour claiming he was the first to step on the summit of Mount Everest and even derided the Sherpa by telling reporters he had to haul him up. This was the reverse of what actually happened, as Tenzing was unable to converse in English. Once the Indian reporters got cracking the truth was out.

Things done well

Cass as usual digressed. Who cares about her fascinations? What she meant to say was that being impressionable, she may have gone overboard in her admiration of Prez Anura Kumara Dissanayake and PM Dr Harini Amarasuriya. But no. Others are as delighted as she is. However, we have the wise ole owls who caution and propound: “Let us wait and see. Judge judiciously.” One such is the Editor of The Island.  He has been wisely cautious. But Cass is certain he and other careful treaders excuse exuberance of admirers and full confidence in the new government. Most believe that those holding major posts in governing us, will correct many glaring misdemeanours, nay, corrupt practices of parliamentarians. Better still is that they will forgo most of the perks that set them apart from us Ordinaries and gave them elevation economically, luxury-wise and encouraged swollen heads, most of which were empty of brains.  That, mercifully, is of the past. Cass and others are certain AKD, Harini and some others will stick to what they have promised and continue to act as they have, so far. AKD will continue opening the door of the car he is driven in and Harini will prevent little ones from going down on their knees paying respect to her. They are truly national minded, concerned with the welfare of Sri Lankans and will keep promises made. Some younger others may have to be kept under surveillance! It is said strict discipline is maintained in the JVP.

There was a steady stream of cars proceeding to the Prez’s office for those within to be sworn in as cabinet ministers. The cars were mostly medium sized, not at all the huge luxury vehicles of the last governments. We hope car pools will be arranged for such gatherings. We strongly expect no tax-free licences will be given to MPS. Ideal if only the Prez and PM are given cars for their use and others made to use their own vehicles or public transport. Too much to hope for, though we are certain the stupendous spending on vehicles to the Minister and even MPs will cease. So, also far too generous perks. This great divide between the ordinary citizen and the MP has to be diminished if not closed. Some of those heads we saw may get swollen, but we are sure not of the three who formed the interim Cabinet since 21 Sept.

Things not done

Cass refers to a glaring act of cheating. Ravi Karunanayake got himself selected to enter Parliament on the National List of the gas cylinder party, I forget its name among all the various permutations of the words ‘democratic’, ‘national, ‘united’ et al. The Secretary of the party – I got its name – New Democratic Front   – known previously to Ravi K connived with him. The cheating was that this was enacted without the leader of the NDF, Ranil Wickremesinghe, having not an inkling of the connivance and act. To compound matters, former Chairman, Election Commission, Mahinda Deshapariya, declares the appointment cannot be cancelled or reversed, not even challenged in court.

The NDF secured two NL slots. Thus, with popular promotion and approval, Kanchana Wijesekera will be the second to be nominated as a National List MP among the gas cylinders.  Wonder how Ravi K will be received in Parliament. Probably no boos, since the NPP government promises correct behaviour in the House, but he will be made to share the feelings of a pariah. Shame!

The second instance of doing something that should not have been done in Cass’ opinion, is the ex-Commissioner of the EC pontificating and throwing clout he does not have when he went to the polling booth to cast his vote. We read Mahinda Deshapriya reprimanded a police officer who was sitting within the booth and told him roundly that he had no business being inside, and had him leave. He had also faulted the overseeing officer of that particular voting station over some minor remiss of the girls marking fingers and calling out names. Cass thrusts aside her fear, and cries out; “How dare he? He is retired.”

And, so fellow Sri Lankans of this beautiful isle in the Indian Ocean, are we on a path of redemption and recovery? Will there be continuing fellowship and respect among the races and religions of the land? And will the potential that is always associated with Sri Lanka be gradually and steadily realised? Cass bets it all will! Bye for this week with hope and anticipation, thanks mostly to the Prez, PM and Minister of External Affairs. We have an educated Cabinet of Ministers for a start.

The decision by the Biden administration to arm Ukraine with long range missiles, hitherto not supplied to the latter, would undoubtedly further escalate and compound the Ukraine conflict. The move is likely to receive a like reaction from the Russian authorities, provided effective measures are taken by the world community to resolve the bloodletting in the Ukraine through a negotiated settlement.

US long range missiles would go some distance in meeting Ukraine’s defence needs but considering that the bolstering of Ukraine’s military capability would not bring any short or medium term relief to the suffering people of the Ukraine, it is open to question whether the Biden administration did right at this juncture through its decision on long range missile supplies.

Besides, the measure would not help in deescalating international tensions stemming from the Ukraine war, since we are bound to see a further intensification of the spiraling violence in Ukraine and its adjacent region.

However, it should be also plain to see that the Ukraine situation has worldwide security implications in view of comments by the Russian authorities to the effect that the decision on long range missiles would represent NATO’s ‘direct participation’ in the Ukraine conflict. Considering that the provision of the missiles could be seen by the Russian side as a ‘direct participation’ of NATO in the war, the world has no option at present but to merely hope fervently that further indiscretions would not be committed by the West and Russia in the Ukraine theatre that would raise the possibility of a full-blown regional war. Needless to say, in such a case international security would be further compromised.

There is an urgent need for good sense on the part of both sides to the conflict. Even as this is being written, the news is that Ukraine has unleashed some of the missiles into Russian territory. Ukraine could very well be motivated to use the missiles as a deterrent measure but given that Russia is unlikely to step back any time soon from the divisive course it has adopted in the Ukraine, the security situation in Eastern Europe could be seen as heading for increasing volatility and uncertainty.

The incoming Donald Trump administration has indicated that it would be working towards a kind of win-win solution in the Ukraine but the challenge before it would be to concede some of Russia’s territorial demands while ensuring Ukraine’s total sovereignty and self-respect. This would prove a Gordian Knot of sorts considering Russia’s obduracy thus far.

Besides, Ukraine’s security would need to be guaranteed. How would Trump assure Ukraine on this score and withhold from it vital weaponry which the latter sees as essential for its future security? This too would prove a knotty negotiating point.

Even on the Middle Eastern front, such dilemmas loom for the incoming Trump administration. A carefully worded statement by a UN Special Committee on the Middle East quite rightly states that the violence inflicted by the Israeli state on the Gaza is ‘consistent with characteristics of genocide’ and no time should be lost by pro-peace sections to bring the blood-letting to an immediate halt.

However, total peace and stability cannot be achieved in the Middle East without ensuring Israel’s continued security. This requirement is usually overlooked or does not come in for sufficient mention by those sections of the international community that take on themselves to scrutinize and comment on the Middle East situation. Going forward, the Trump administration would need to take on this complex challenge of meeting the needs of the Palestinian people while ensuring Israel’s legitimate right to survive and thrive as an inviolable state. Besides, the administration would need to breathe new life into the ‘Two State’ solution and render it workable.

It would accrue to the benefit of the Ukraine and the Middle East if Trump could convince the Putin regime of the need to help de-escalate the relevant conflicts and work towards negotiated solutions in both theatres. The ideal situation would be for the total membership of the UN Security Council to be united in working towards a de-escalation of the mentioned wasting conflicts. However, at present, the major states within the UNSC do not see eye-to-eye on these questions and this renders peace-making difficult.

In this exacting situation the global South would need to examine the possibility of exerting itself to the maximum to bring about an end to the wasting conflicts in focus. Right now, the global South is both wide ranging and fluid. Some decades back, this was not the case. Formations such as NAM and the G77 gave it a more or less definitive identity. Today, the mentioned bodies are almost non-existent.

However, in a vital sense the South exists because the causes which were espoused by organizations such as NAM are by no means irrelevant. For example, the challenge of keeping an equidistance between conflicting major powers, remains for the world’s powerless.

Likewise, poverty is continuing to be widespread in the South. It is true that one cannot find a country today that has not gone in for market reforms but even in the ‘success stories’ of the South, such as India, poverty remains starkly. For the majority of the South’s countries, market reforms have not ended poverty. On the contrary, the chasm between the rich few and the poor many has widened alarmingly.

Accordingly, the causes that gave the global South an identity and a mission remain. The challenge at hand for the South is to urgently regroup and to continue to champion the causes it once did. Although in a traditional sense Non-alignment does not exist, to consider one issue area, the need grows by the day for the poor to continue to steer clear of the big powers but to exist with them with cordiality. Such cordiality is Non-alignment creatively re-interpreted.

Accordingly, the Non-aligned Movement needs to be revived because its relevance has not eroded fundamentally. Major powers of the South, such as India, South Africa and Indonesia, for example, need to consider coming together and giving leadership to the world’s poor and powerless.

The voice of a vigorously regrouped and revived South cannot be ignored in international politics because it possesses the numbers. Such numbers would continue to carry weight in the forums of the world that count in the vital matter of ushering a measure of international peace and security.

These are seemingly ambitious enterprises for the South but they need to be undertaken because a Non-aligned Southern bloc would carry more credibility in the world’s theatres of conflict and war and be accepted as a genuine peace maker in contrast to the big powers of the East and West and their alliances, who would be distrusted by conflicting sides on account of their partialities and divisive agendas.

Clarification

By an inadvertent error it was mentioned in this column last week, (See ‘Timely theatrical exploration of Middle East Conflict’, The Island of November 14th, 2024, page 4), that the Rohingyas were driven out of their land by ‘Bangladesh’s military rulers’. The statement should stand corrected to read: by ‘Myanmar’s military rulers.’ The error is regretted.