COLOMBO — Amphibians evolved from a fish ancestor that had functional lungs and bony lobed fins, which helped them become the first vertebrates to conquer land. Keeping these earlier trails,…
COLOMBO — Stuck in the long lines of vehicles queuing up for what little, and expensive, fuel is available at Sri Lanka’s beleaguered gas stations are the SUVs bearing the…
COLOMBO — Crows have long had a reputation as a nuisance and a pest, even though it’s widely recognized that they’re among the most intelligent of birds. In Sri Lanka,…
COLOMBO — For decades, the small population of Indian pangolins found in Sri Lanka has faced a single consistent threat: the domestic meat market. Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy…
COLOMBO — Mahalingam Kanapathi set off from his hometown of Beruwala in southwestern Sri Lanka in May 2021. Less than a month later, and nearly 3,000 kilometers (1,900 miles) away,…
COLOMBO — It took a tweet from Hollywood superstar Leonardo DiCaprio to bring the issue of trash-foraging elephants in Sri Lanka to global attention. But local conservationists have long been…
COLOMBO — Lake Diyawanna in Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, Sri Lanka’s administrative capital, sits at the heart of an urban wetland that’s a haven for birds and an attraction for nature…
COLOMBO — To study the feeding patterns of frog-biting mosquitoes, scientist Priyanka de Silva of the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka had to identify both the mosquitoes and the…
COLOMBO — There was little relief from the scorching sun on the beach, but the volunteers kept at their work, scouring the sand for small plastic pellets known as nurdles.…
COLOMBO — The rich diversity of bulbuls in South Asia can be traced as far as the Sundaland region of Southeast Asia, in the islands that today make up Indonesia…
WASGAMUWA, Sri Lanka — Elephant calves arriving at dusk to drink at the Weheragala reservoir tank in Wasgamuwa National Park can be particularly playful. But one day in September 2020,…
UDAWALAWE, Sri Lanka — Environmental activists in Sri Lanka have slammed a court order releasing endangered elephants into the custody of individuals suspected of involvement in their illegal capture and…
COLOMBO — Himesh Dilruwan Jayasinghe was on a butterfly chase in Sri Lanka’s Knuckles Mountains, in the Indian Ocean island’s central highlands. He’d tracked down a rare butterfly known as…
COLOMBO — The leaf litter and other decaying plant matter that carpet Sri Lanka’s lowland rainforests are potential lurking points for numerous blood-sucking leeches and hideouts of some venomous snakes.…
COLOMBO — In its territorial waters and exclusive economic zone, Sri Lanka is home to an abundance of coastal and marine resources. And while national policies and development visions already…
MANNAR, Sri Lanka — Born in the frozen Arctic tundra, a population of Heuglin’s gull (Larus fuscus heuglini) heads to tropical Sri Lanka every year during the harsh Northern Hemisphere…
NUWARA ELIYA, Sri Lanka — Declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its natural significance, the Peak Wilderness rainforest in Sri Lanka’s central highlands is a difficult terrain to explore.…
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sunitha Rathnayake, a homemaker in southern Sri Lanka, was down to the last of her salt and planned to order some more from an online grocery…
MATARA, Sri Lanka — The Polhena reef and the surrounding shallow seas in southern Sri Lanka are home to a number of marine turtles that stay there year round. Randunu…
GALLE, Sri Lanka — Buses are the most common mode of public transport in Sri Lanka. But after thousands of trips, facilitating millions of commuter rides over their operating lifetime,…
The Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka has faced many maritime disasters over the years, but none as bad as the recent incident with the MV X-Press Pearl, a freighter…
PUTTALAM, Sri Lanka — Samith Fernando runs a tour boat service in Puttalam Lagoon, a scenic spot about 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital. In…
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — The first time Mahinda Samarawickrama, a farmer in Hambantota district, southern Sri Lanka, was attacked by an elephant, he’d gone down to the village reservoir at…
COLOMBO — Up to 100 turtles and 20 dolphins have washed up dead on Sri Lanka’s beaches in the past month, as experts fear a link to the leak of…
COLOMBO — Authorities in Sri Lanka have called for a renewed focus on conserving the island’s rich coastal ecosystems, identifying the “blue economy” as key to the nation’s sustainable development.…
COLOMBO — Thor is an 11-year-old, well-built male lion at Sri Lanka’s National Zoological Gardens in the Colombo suburb of Dehiwala. He’s something of an icon at the zoo, famed…
COLOMBO — Folklore has it that babies were delivered by storks, who carried them in slings from their beaks and left them at the door of unsuspecting couples. But the…
COLOMBO — Satellite images have captured a silvery slick spreading on the surface of the sea from the burnt-out wreck of a cargo ship that sank off Colombo earlier this…
COLOMBO — Along the shoreline north of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s commercial capital, the beaches are littered with millions of tiny white pellets, each about the size of a peppercorn. “The…
COLOMBO — The X-Press Pearl cargo ship that caught fire off western Sri Lanka has begun to sink, raising alarms over oil and chemical spills that could have potentially devastating…
