By Rathindra Kuruwita

Some Forest Conservation Department officials are more interested in building roads and structures inside protected areas than protecting forests, Sajeewa Chamikara of the Movement for Land and Agricultural Reforms (MONLAR) says.

“These officials are not interested in preventing illegal activities inside protected areas or raising the awareness of those who live near these areas, especially around Sinharaja Forest”, he said.

Ecosystem Conservation and Management Project (ESCAMP), a World Bank mission was a case in point, Chamikara said, alleging that it sought to develop forests as tourism centres.

“During the first part of the ESCAMP, forest conservation, officials developed roads at the Kudawa entrance. They constructed a two-kilometre road with a width of 10 feet, through Sinharaja. They even put waterlines in. A large number of freshwater crabs and amphibians lost their habitats and breeding grounds because of these constructions. We don’t see some animals like the Kangaroo lizard and the Sri Lankan green pit viper in that area anymore”, he said.

Chamikara added that the roads constructed under ESCAMP could not even be used by tourists anymore because they were slippery. At certain times forest conservation officials allow vehicles on these roads. “There are earth slips along the road and further constructions have been made to stop this”, he said.

Despite the failure of the first leg of the ESCAMP project, forest conservation officials were trying to build an eight-foot road from another entrance in the Kudawa area to the research centre in the forest, Chamikara said.He said that the proposed road would go through an area that had a lot of ferns and a number of indigenous species.

“There are also many small and micro species in this area as well. We will lose them. When swaths of forests are cleared a number of invasive species find their way into Sinharaja. Plants like Koster’s Curse (Dillenia suffruticosa) have already invaded Sinharaja. Endemic orchids, ferns, moss and many plants in the forest undergrowth have been run over. This also affects animals that depend on these plants. Sinharaja is a very sensitive and interconnected biological hotspot. Change made in one place will affect the entire system,” Chamikara said.

Chamikara said that a similar set of incidents had taken place in the Knuckles Forest Range and a number of endemic species to Knuckles were now slowly becoming extinct. “The World Bank projects like ESCAMP are aimed at short-term profit over long term sustainability,” he said.

“We are not against tourism, which is a vital source of revenue. However, you need to build tourist accommodation outside forests. Extremely sensitive forest areas must not be opened to tourists. We talk a lot about attracting quality tourists who spend a lot of money. There are tourists who spend thousands of dollars a night on nature tourism, but such individuals also like nature. They won’t come into a place where their patronage will lead to environmental destruction”, Chamikara said, adding that Sri Lanka was a party to many UN biodiversity conventions. “Successive governments talk about achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. However, the entire state mechanism is silent when large swaths of highly important forests, catchment areas and biological hot spots are destroyed to create an access way for tourism.

“Soon these access ways will be used by politicians to build hotels inside Sinharaja. We already see that those who embezzled billions of rupees from the people are now spending these moneys to purchase and renovate hotels in highly sensitive environmental areas.”

Chamikara said that the threat to Sinharaja had been increasing in the past few years. In 2020 and 2021, two circulars had been issued by the government, handing over the management of Other State Forests (OSF) to Divisional/District Secretaries, he said.

“These circulars repealed an earlier circular, 05/2001, which had transferred the management of these lands from the Divisional/District Secretaries to the Forest Department. Through circular 1/2020, the OSF were brought under Divisional/Districts Secretaries and circular 1/2021 allowed the officials to survey the OSF and allocate them for development activities. The power these two circulars granted to Divisional/Districts Secretaries has been used by those with political and financial power to clear up forest lands in Sinharaja,” he said.

Minister of Agriculture, Wildlife and Forest Resources Conservation, Mahinda Amaraweera said that he was not aware of this development and would look into it.