Sri Lanka seeks lasting solution as human-elephant conflict takes record toll
COLOMBO — Each day, as the sun set over the horizon, Thettuwage Tennakoon and his wife would carefully climb up into their treehouse in the middle of their rice field.…
Articles by Dilrukshi
Dilrukshi Handunnetti is a Colombo based journalist and lawyer. Trained as an investigative journalist, her reporting covers a range of topics. Dilrukshi has won local and international awards for excellence in journalism and collaborates across South Asia.
Updated red list raises red flags for Sri Lanka’s birds, especially endemics
COLOMBO — When Uditha Hettige started out doing field excursions in 1990, in search of Sri Lanka’s rich bird life, he would visit Bodhinagala Forest Reserve in the country’s west…
Green and gossamer, and not gone: A Sri Lankan dragonfly flits back to life
COLOMBO — The first time that scientists described the beautiful metallic-green dragonfly that they would later call Flint’s cruiser was in 1970. Based on a single male specimen, they named…
Sri Lanka university aims to be the country’s first to go carbon neutral
COLOMBO — The small Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka may contribute only 0.03% to global carbon emission levels yet it has set an ambitious target to become carbon neutral…
Shipping lane change could be sea change for Sri Lanka’s blue whales
COLOMBO — When some of the biggest machines ever made meet the largest animals to ever live, it often doesn’t work out well for the latter. In March 2012, a…
Dog shooting highlights Sri Lanka’s need for stricter animal cruelty laws
COLOMBO — The horrific fatal shooting of a 1 1/2-year-old Rottweiler in Sri Lanka has sparked fresh concerns about the country’s outdated animal cruelty laws. Rexie went missing in the…
Photos: How Sri Lanka’s forced organic transition crippled its tea industry
In the months leading up to Sri Lanka’s presidential election in November 2019, leading candidate Gotabaya Rajapaksa spoke about the need for leaders to implement policies without arguing about the…
New cave bat species in Sri Lanka highlights need for more research
COLOMBO — During the 18th and 19th centuries when Sri Lanka was a British colony, many British naturalists studied the island’s rich biodiversity and contributed to profiling the same. Tea…
Sri Lankan study identifies new jellyfish, sparking interest in the species
Colombo, SRI LANKA — Like floating mushrooms with thin and transparent tentacles, jellyfish would have been drifting in the oceanic currents for several millions of years and even predating the…
Sri Lanka eyes major compensation case over X-Press Pearl sinking
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka has received $2.5 million in the third interim payment for the impacts caused by the sinking of the X-Press Pearl cargo vessel off the country’s western…
Sri Lankan researchers bring little-studied ‘flowerpot’ snake to light
COLOMBO — Look past the venomous vipers and cobras and the powerful constrictors. Dig a little deeper — literally, into the soil — and you might find one of the…
Sri Lanka fuel shortage takes massive toll on efforts to save wildlife
COLOMBO — Anyone who’d ever seen Maheshakya in the wildernesses of Kebithigollewa in Sri Lanka’s North Central province agreed that, as elephants went, he was an exemplary specimen with large…
Drawing the wrong lessons from Sri Lanka’s organic farming experience (commentary)
Since the downfall of Sri Lanka’s former president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in mid-July, some commentators have blamed the economic crisis and social unrest that precipitated his departure on his nominal experiment…
Sri Lankan environmental policy failures helped fuel people power revolution
COLOMBO — When Gotabaya Rajapaksa was forced from office this month, among those leading the people power movement against Sri Lanka’s deeply unpopular president were the country’s environmental activists. For…
In a former conflict zone in Sri Lanka, a world rich in corals thrives
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — Ashani Arulananthan says she can recall childhood visits to the beach in her home village in Sri Lanka’s northern district of Jaffna. She would collect washed-up…
In Sri Lanka, a waterbird flips the parenting paradigm on its head
COLOMBO — When it comes to super dads in the animal kingdom, the striking-looking waterbird known as the pheasant-tailed jacana is in a universe all its own. From incubating the…
The curious case of the Sri Lankan national flower that wasn’t
COLOMBO — As a school student in Sri Lanka in 1986, Deepthi Yakandawala sent a greeting card to the country’s president, J.R. Jayewardene, for Vesak, the holiest day in the…
In Sri Lankan waters, endangered but unprotected rays encounter a killing field
COLOMBO — When fishermen in southern Sri Lanka recently caught a giant oceanic manta ray, they needed a backhoe to haul it out of the water once they reached land.…
Report sums up wealth of Sri Lanka’s biodiversity — and the threats it faces
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka has submitted its 6th National Report to the Convention on Biological Diversity, offering the most comprehensive view yet of the country’s wealth of plant and animal…
Study: Breeding adaptations help tree frogs thrive in different climates
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,…
Sri Lanka’s environmentalists brace for economic meltdown’s toll on nature
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…
For Sri Lanka’s crows, following the trash is all part of the hustle
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,…
Shining a light on Sri Lanka’s little-studied pangolins: Q&A with Priyan Perera
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…
Sri Lanka grapples with the problem of its fishers plundering waters abroad
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,…
Poor waste management turns dump sites into death traps for Sri Lanka’s elephants
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…
Photos: On Colombo’s outskirts, an urban birding paradise flourishes
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…
New photo guide is most comprehensive yet on Sri Lanka’s amphibians
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…
Burnt pellets complicate impact of plastic spill off Sri Lanka, study finds
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.…
New study reveals globe-trotting pedigree of South Asian songbirds
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…
Jaw bombs, the deadliest threat to Sri Lanka’s elephants, are scaling up
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,…
Special series
Forest Trackers
- Deforestation ‘out of control’ in reserve in Brazil’s cattle capital
- In Brazil’s Amazon, land grabbers scramble to claim disputed Indigenous reserve
- Gold mining invades remote protected area in Ecuador
- ‘Panic’ sets in as armed groups occupy, deforest Colombian national park
Oceans
- U.S. refuses calls for immediate protection of North Atlantic right whales
- Re-carbonizing the sea: Scientists to start testing a big ocean carbon idea
- As sea lice feast away on dwindling salmon, First Nations decide the fate of salmon farms
- Study aims to unmask fishing vessels, and owners, obscured by loopholes
Amazon Conservation
- Sonia Guajajara: Turnaround from jail threats to Minister of Indigenous Peoples
- From Japan to Brazil: Reforesting the Amazon with the Miyawaki method
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office
Land rights and extractives
- Tense neighbors: Chinese quarry in Cameroon takes a toll on locals
- FOIA lawsuit suggests Indonesian nickel miners lack environmental licenses
- Shadows of oil in Peru: Shipibo people denounce damage, contamination left by company
- In Liberia, a gold boom leads to unregulated mining and ailing rivers
Endangered Environmentalists
- ‘We lost the biggest ally’: Nelly Marubo on her friend Bruno Pereira’s legacy
- Murders of 2 Pataxó leaders prompt Ministry of Indigenous Peoples to launch crisis office
- Worries and whispers in Vietnam’s NGO community after activist’s sentencing
- Scientists call for end to violence against Amazon communities, environmental defenders
Indonesia's Forest Guardians
- Pioneer agroforester Ermi, 73, rolls back the years in Indonesia’s Gorontalo
- After 20 years and thousands of trees planted, Kalimantan’s veteran forester persists
- Aziil Anwar, Indonesian coral-based mangrove grower, dies at 64
- A utopia of clean air and wet peat amid Sumatra’s forest fire ‘hell’
Conservation Effectiveness
- Biodiversity, human rights safeguards crucial to nature-based solutions: Critics
- Protecting canids from planet-wide threats offers ecological opportunities
- Mangrove forest loss is slowing toward a halt, new report shows
- ‘South Asia needs its own tiger plan’: Q&A with Nepal’s Maheshwar Dhakal
Southeast Asian infrastructure
- Tunnel collapse at dam project in orangutan habitat claims yet another life
- Sulawesi nickel plant coats nearby homes in toxic dust
- Indonesia’s grand EV plans hinge on a ‘green’ industrial park that likely isn’t
- Java communities rally as clock ticks on cleanup of ‘world’s dirtiest river’
