An intrusion into Yala?

The Wild Life and Nature Protection Society of Sri Lanka, established in 1894 when we were Ceylon under the British Empire, has over one and a quarter centuries rendered yeoman service for the preservation of our rapidly vanishing wilderness. Thus the alert it sounded last week that there may, we repeat may, be a possible attempt to intrude into the Yala National Park by the construction of an illegal road must be taken seriously. WNPS is not accusing anybody, least of all the Government, of authorizing such a project. But it’s antenna are up following the surfacing of information that the Director General of Wild Life Conservation (DWC) has authorized three officials of the Archaeological Department to conduct a survey around Akasa Chaitya or Elephant Rock within the Park.

There have been reports that some military officers had accompanied the survey team but these have not been verified. As WNPS has said in a statement we publish in today’s issue of our newspaper, it is yet to learn the real scope and purpose of the survey but it was deeply concerned by these developments in the context of what has been happening over the past 10-12 years. Certain “interested parties,” it says, have ambitions to lay claim to the ancient Akasa Chaitya site as a place of pilgrimage and build a road to it from Sithulpahuwa. The dangers of such a road being built is self-evident. WNPS warns this would lead to “the catastrophic division” of one of the country’s premier National Parks which is a precious resource. It is not necessary to labor the fact that our National Parks are already over-visited resulting in serious consequences for wildlife living within them. The construction of any new road would obviously aggravate this already sorry situation.

All Lankans of goodwill, anxious to preserve what is left of the country’s natural heritage, will join WNPS in hoping that what is happening is no more than an archaeological survey of an ancient site and not what it called “a feint for more sinister purposes.” Denials of such intent have already made by the Minister of Wild Life and others including Minister Namal Rajapaksa who has a special interest in his home district of Hambantota where Yala is located. Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa, a wildlife enthusiast, has gone public with a contrary view. However that be, it is incumbent on all to be wary of possible dangers in the context of past experiences. The process of chipping away or aggressively intruding into natural reserves in the name of development has been gaining momentum over the years; this despite several bad experiences ex post facto of consequences of such intrusion. The country is now saddled with the human-elephant conflict which has assumed massive proportions with tragic consequences for both elephants and humans. Everybody knows that the Sinharaja rain forest continues to be under grave threat and it was only recently that an attempt to build a reservoir within it was abandoned thanks to public opinion. The Archbishop and the Catholic Church are resisting an attempted assault on Muthurajawela. The Thalangama wetland is under threat by an expressway. The list goes on.

There is no escaping the reality that a fine balance must be struck between the country’s development needs and environmental concerns. There will never be a proper answer to where the priority must lie. This will be a continuing struggle not only in Sri Lanka but throughout the planet. We already know how human activity has sped climate change to the detriment of not just mankind but all living beings. The population challenge that the earth faces is ever-growing though developing technology and scientific advance will provide some though not all the answers. Developmental and environmental interests will always be in conflict but increased ‘green’ awareness will act as a brake of some sort.

Marx, Lenin or Stalin?

Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachi went on record with a delectable one-liner by recently saying that it matters not whether it’s Marx, Lenin or Stalin, all those who broke the Covid rules would have to bear the consequences. The reference of course was to the teachers union boss Joseph Stalin who was in quarantine at Mullaitivu as this is being written. Few, if any, will buy into the claim that the government had no hand in giving Stalin the treatment his namesake in the Soviet Union meted out to his people; it was all action by the police on orders of the Director-General of Health to deal with the fast-spreading virus, the rulers have claimed.

The government was obviously getting seriously bothered with the myriads of protests occurring countrywide beamed into hundreds of thousands of homes every evening by television. Such protests were first against fertilizer shortages and then against the forthcoming Kotelawala Defence University Bill. Farmers also protested about not being able to market their produce. Hence the heavy handed response sending off their leaders to distant quarantine. This despite their being bailed out by the courts. Such action is now being challenged and the outcome is yet down the road. Meanwhile several protest leaders had tested Covid negative but were yet being held in quarantine. The powers that be had taken their own sweet time in doing the tests, it is alleged. However that be, subsequent protests have been handled less roughly with compromises on both sides: a semblance of social distancing by the protesters and less strong arm tactics on the part of the police.