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Gal oya National Park awakes after 20 years

by Florence Wickramage

Senanayake Samudraya as seen from Kossagala. (Pictures by Marlon Karunaratne)

Sri Lanka is one vast wetland in itself and is internationally renowned as a bio-diversity hot spot. The rich bio-diversity is not confined to one district or one area only, but spreads throughout the island.

Our visit to the Gal oya National Park recently was an adventure in itself. We drove through rugged roads, under thick overhanging branches and overgrown foliage. The jungle was so thick that at the least sound we held our breadth, wondering whether we would encounter a wild elephant.

This National Park had been isolated for the past two decades due to terrorist activities. The devastation done by illicit timber loggers was evident. Fishermen had made inroads through the jungle to the Senanayake Samudraya as was evident by the branches placed on forks of trees invoking protection from the tree gods. Sure enough game-hunters too would have had their fill since no official authority could be exercised over the park during this period.

As if woken up from deep slumber, the Gal oya National Park has been thrust into the limelight following the current peace process.

As we continued our adventurous journey through thick jungle, the present warden of the Gal Oya National Park Wasantha Pushpananda explained to us that this National Park serves as the main catchment area for the Senanayake Samudraya which helps to irrigate thousands of acres of paddy land. People in these areas are paddy farmers.

We continued our journey and arrived at Kossagala where starkly naked trees stood silhouetted against the evening skies, due to the drastic reduction of the waters of the Senanayake Samudraya. We were informed that during rainy seasons most of these trees drown with the rising waters of the Samudraya. Across the bank we saw wild elephants emerging from the jungle in herds making their way to the water's edge. Some of them were already frolicking in the water while a matriarch or two stood their ground and focussed their attention on us.

Since dusk was gathering, we used our binoculars and counted over fifty elephants. Rich in natural beauty Kebellagala, Diggalpura and Kossapola within the park are ideal camping sites for visitors.

Covering an extent of 25,900 hectares, and known as Wellassa (Wel Lakshya- meaning one lakh of paddy fields), the area was brought into sharp focus with the Gal Oya Development programme initiated by the late Hon. D.S.Senanayake. Fed by easterly monsoons, Gal Oya National Park receives an yearly rainfall of 1700mm. The Nilgala and Ratugala villages inhabited by the indigenous people of ancient Lanka, are also in close proximity.

Biodiversity

Due to the richness of this wetland, the Park is a natural habitat for a wide range of fauna and flora. Consisting of a dry mixed vegetation including savannah grass the Gal Oya National Park is enveloped in an extensive green cover. A host of medicinal shrubs and trees are prevalent in the Nilgala area, i.e. Aralu, Bulu, Nelli while a number of locally known trees such as Vevarana, Halmilla, Veera, Palu, Ebony and Mahogany are found in great numbers.

The park with its thick green canopy developed over the past solitary years, is a haven for species of birds and nearer to the Samudraya even migratory birds such as Painted Storks, Pelicans, Cormorants and Teals could be seen. A host of local birds such as the Grey Dove, Malabar Horn Bill and Grey Horn Bill, Koel and a number of water birds are found in this jungle habitat.

In addition to elephants the park is home to leopards, bear, spotted deer, sambur, wild boar etc. Among other fauna are several species of monkeys, Porcupine, a number of fish species, reptiles and four species of butterflies such as the Crimson rose and Glassy Tiger have been recorded.

Threats

Illegal timber-felling goes on unabated with timber-sawing structures being put up within the jungle area in Nilgala, while the Namal Oya area has also been thus threatened. In Nilgala alone around 30 acres of jungle land had been cleared by this activity. Pirating of medicinal herbs in the Ratugala and Nilgala areas have been reported. Wildlife rangers have pointed out that the lack of staff to oversee the 65,000 acres of the National Park is a prime concern.

The 25-30 range officers and one vehicle are the resources now available for the protection of the National Park.

The entrance to the Park is unprotected and the notice board preventing unauthorised entry into the park is no more. Wildlife Conservation Department's (DWLC) Deputy Director K.A.Amaratunge who is in charge of the Northern Region said that the department was making arrangements to open the park for visitors and the infrastructure is being put up as the number of visitors could increase with the stabilising of the peace process.

We were able to visit the Kumana Sanctuary on the eastern border of the Yala National Park. Kumana too had been unaccessible during the past two decades. We witnessed a near total destruction of the sanctuary. The beautiful villus, waterways and pools except for one, were parched.

The jungle roads bore signs of heavy vehicular traffic movements. There were gravel motorable roadways criss-crossing the once beautiful green sanctuary. The beauty that was Kumana long ago, is no more. In addition the Okande Devale dedicated to Lord Muruga is within the Kumana boundary and attracts pilgrims daily.

Future Plans

Additional Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry Sunil Sarath Perera who accompanied us said that under the direction of Minister Rukman Senanayake a series of management plans are underway for the protection of the Gal Oya National Park and the Kumana Sanctuary. Preparation of brochures for the use of school children and visitors are under way. The past two decades have even made informative literature extinct! Director Gamini Gamage of the Biodiversity Unit of the Central Environmental Authority, who also accompanied us said that these national parks were being prepared for visitors.

Though a long process, action has been initiated.We noted, regrettably that the DWLC has made no initiative so far, to administer specially the Galoya National park which comes within its purview.

Therefore, noting the importance of this National Park as the catchment area of the Senanayake Samudraya, bio-diversity rich natural habitat of fauna and flora it is imperative that the authorities concerned should launch an immediate action plan to conserve and protect this all important national park.

Ecojargon the lingua franca at Johannesburg summit

by Matt Daily

AMSTERDAM, (Reuters) The 50,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries set to throng the Johannesburg summit this month will have no problem finding a common language to thrash out a strategy for sustainable development. They'll be immersed in the eco-jargon that splits experts from the lay community - most of whom have no idea what the broad, vague phrase "sustainable development" actually means.

Virtually every discipline comes with its own code words designed to divide the uninitiated from the seasoned pro. "Often they are carefully designed words with specific meanings. Some become part of language and some fail to get there," said Nick Nuttall, head of media services at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi.

"They're an attempt to define very big subjects in very short words which can really mean nothing. They're a compromise."

impact

Most people may not consider themselves "stakeholders" in the summit, but the wide reaching impacts are likely to go far beyond the governments who sign any pact agreed in Johannesburg to the companies and communities who will benefit from - or pay for - sustainable development. "I avoid using 'stakeholder' and use 'all sections of society'," UNEP's Nuttall said. "There's a lot of corporatisation of the language. It sounds a lot like 'shareholder'."

With half the world's leaders and hundreds of NGOs (non-governmental organisations) attending, the U.N. conference officially titled the World Summit on Sustainable Development, but nicknamed Earth Summit 2 or Rio+10, may set new standards. And that's not to mention the alphabet soup of acronyms at what will be the largest ever MSP (multi-stakeholder process) on WEHAB (water, energy, health, agricultural biodiversity and sustainable ecosystem management).

The term "sustainable development" first emerged from the 1970s environmental movement, but it languished in obscurity for a decade until a United Nations commission took up the task of linking environmental responsibility to economic growth. "We looked for a joint phrase and came up with 'sustainable development'," said Gro Harlem Brundtland, who led the group that produced the landmark 1987 U.N. report "Our Common Future".

ability

The team led by Brundtland, a former Norwegian prime minister and current head of the World Health Organisation, defined sustainable development as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs".

But squeezing the term into the international environmental lexicon was another matter.

"We spent a long time translating it into all the languages of the world - it was especially difficult in German," she told Reuters. Whatever its early problems, "nachhaltige Entwicklung" has become common currency in environmentally progressive Germany, which voted its Green party into power in 1998. The Brundtland commission and "Our Common Future" laid the groundwork that led to the 1992 Rio "Earth Summit" and the guiding "Agenda 21" action plan that sought to guide policy makers trying to reduce world poverty, improve access to water and energy yet spread the social benefits of economic growth.

Despite the early U.N. efforts, the "sustainable development" moniker failed to catch on with either the public or development groups, according to the forthcoming book "Walking the Talk" from the Geneva-based World Business Council on Sustainable Development.

"Environmental groups do not appear to like the concept because they did not 'invent' it and because it has the word 'development' in it," wrote author Stephan Schmidheiny.

Development groups dislike it for "being too green, feeling that all the emphasis is on the needs of the future rather than the needs of the present".

Critics have derided the U.N. bureaucracy and green groups for engaging in 'ecobabble', a derogatory term defined as using the technical language of ecology to make the user seem ecologically aware.

public image

Environmental groups, for their part, accuse companies and states of "greenwashing" - disseminating disinformation to create an environmentally responsible public image. In the hands of partisans, even a common, everyday word can become political dynamite. No word has sparked more controversy than "partnership" - an issue high on the Johannesburg agenda, with some governments promoting it in a bid to share the responsibility and costs of any new activities with the hundreds of companies or non-governmental groups expected to swarm the conference.

"I learned in (pre-conference meetings) just how loaded some of these terms are. It turns out the word 'partnership' is suspect in a lot of circles," said Frances Seymour, a programme director at the Washington environmental think tank World Resources Institute.

Green groups say countries such as the United States have seized on the 'partnership' label to push for more business openings for companies instead of signing on to new multilateral development and environmental agreements.

"It's code that the U.S. is using to avoid intergovernmental agreements and binding targets and timetables," said Steve Sawyer, climate adviser for Greenpeace International.

Rakwana-Deniyaya hills - a plea for their conservation

by Prof. Nimal Gunatilleke ,University of Peradeniya

However, the forests along the eastern perimeter of the Sinharaja WHS have not received the attention they deserve. These areas have not been adequately surveyed even during the National Conservation Review (NCR). With respect to plants, they harbour an exceptionally diverse herbaceous and epiphytic flora including orchids, balsams, ferns, bryophytes (mosses, liverworts) etc.,a component of the vegetation in all ecosystems, which was not studied by the NCR and for that matter one that has almost entirely been neglected in Sri Lankan biodiversity surveys.

Therefore, relying entirely on the National Conservation review as the source of quantitative scientific information for the purposes of conservation planning could lead to serious omissions of areas that are rich in herbaceous and epiphytic plants.

Consequently, due to the dearth of adequate scientific information, areas like Rakwana-Deniyaya hills are not included in the current protected area system and hence are in imminent danger of being degraded further by poachers, wood cutters, cardamom cultivators and illicit gem prospectors and even others for new unsustainable enterprises. Another serious threat to our biodiversity appears to come apparently quite innocuously from the publication of the list of threatened plants by the IUCN (2000) based on their new criteria for which only the quantitative scientific information available from field surveys have been used.

Consequently, the herbaceaous flora like orchids, ferns,mosses and liverworts, mushrooms and lichens not enumerated by the systematic surveys like the NCR have not been listed as threatened for the want of quantitative data. This has the danger of being manipulated by unscrupulous collectors and exporters claiming that they are not in the internationally declared red list.

Now that a new ministry bringing together the Departments of Forest and Wildlife Conservation has been established and a functioning Biodiversity Unit at the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment is in place, issues of this nature should be addressed with a sense of urgency giving utmost priority in a better planned and coherent manner before the next wave of 'development' overwhelms us. We can take a good lesson from India on how they are planning their conservation management of western Ghats with whom we share one of the 'hotspots' of global biodiversity. I sincerely hope the new brooms will sweep better, and continue to do so.

Recommendations

* Extension of the current boundaries of eastern Sinharaja to include Handapan-ella Plains and the surrounding hill range (Kabaragala, Beralagala, Suriyakanda, Kurulugala and Gongala, Abbey Rock, Naigala, Panilkanda as outlying areas) is an urgent and long over-due commitment by the Government authorities to conserve the rich biodiversity of the Rakwana-Deniyaya hills.

* Alternatively, declare them as conservation forests or even create a new Wildlife reserve (a sanctuary or national park) encompassing the above mentioned areas.

* A resource inventory and a management plan for Rakwana-Deniyaya hills should be prepared as was done for the Knuckles, Peak-Wilderness, Kanneliya and even other fragmented lowland rain forest areas.

* A more intensive assessment of biodiversity with emphasis on hitherto neglected herbaceous plants and lower groups of animals should be conducted as a prerequisite for the preparation of conservation management plans for the newly identified protected areas in this region.

* Migratory routes of the elephants inhabiting this region should be studied in order to demarcate and establish elephant corridors connecting the surrounding forests,particularly on the northern side of the RD hills. Being a dwindling population of elephants akin to those inhabiting the Peak Wilderness, a conservation management plan for the wet zone elephant should also be considered.

* Since the role of the elephant in the functioning of these complex rain forests is virtually unknown, a study on this aspect would be beneficial especially in the context of the development of nature-based tourism in this region.

* Setting up of a Wildlife Range Office in this region to protect wildlife of the area should be given due consideration.

* Conversion of Pinus plantations into indigenous mixed species forest stands in the Bulutota Pass area should be attempted as a pilot project based on the available research findings. Such Pinus plantations converted to indigenous mixed species plantations can in turn be included in the Buffer zone around the Sinharaja National Heritage Wilderness Area.

* Facilities in the Morningside area should be gradually improved to relieve the visitor pressure on the Kudawa side of Sinharaja forest.

* The Biodiversity unit at the Ministry of Natural Resources together with the National Science Foundation of the Ministry of Science and Technology should facilitate as a priority the conservation of critical ecosystems and landscapes like the RD hills and others which by default have not been ranked high in the NCR survey.

* A biodiversity 'gap analysis' should be carried out to remedy the discrepancies and omissions of biodiversity rich areas.

* Every encouragement should be given by these agencies to those who are willing to invest their time and knowledge for the conservation and sustainable management of these natural resources in conformity with national and international (Convention on Biological Diversity) Legislation.

* With a set of trained man-power in environment management now being made available through the EA1 Project, the provincial administration should take responsibility in documenting and conserving smaller forest reserves rich in biodiversity and important for soil and water conservation at local level.

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