Harsha accuses govt of planning to grab 500,000 hectares of forest cover for agriculture

Former UNF Minister Harsha de Silva yesterday said that the government was planning to obtain 500,000 hectares of forest with high biodiversity and vest those lands under the District Secretaries and Divisional Secretaries for agricultural purposes.

This could be considered the biggest ever robbery of lands with a high density of biodiversity in the recent history. Dr. de Silva said.

“Rivers, canals, waterways flow through those lands and there are also archaeological sites in them,” De Silva pointed out.

He said that there was enough lands in the country for cultivation and it was a crime to acquire large chunks of forest cover for that purpose.

The former Minister said: “I am well aware of the need to develop enterprises in the country, but it is utterly foolish to destroy the environment in the name of development.”

Those forests which were around 50-years-old with a high biodiversity and home to endemic species like the black leopards reported killed in the recent past were found in the above mentioned areas, De Silva said.

Dr. de Silva said the development of a country did not mean the construction of highways and high-rise buidlings alone; its envirionment, too, had to be conserved.