HIYARE, Sri Lanka — Bouts of panic buying quickly cleared supermarket and store shelves with each lifting of Sri Lanka’s COVID-19 curfew to allow residents to stock up on essentials.…
There has been much media hype about improved air quality in Sri Lanka, and particularly in the island’s commercial capital, Colombo, during the COVID-19 lockdown phase. However, a close examination…
BUNDALA, Sri Lanka – The glossy ibis (Plegadis falcinellus) is a fairly rare but regular winter visitor to Sri Lanka, seen at the Bundala National Park in the island’s south…
COLOMBO — On May 29, a vanishingly rare black leopard — an actual black panther — died at a government wildlife treatment facility in Sri Lanka. It had been brought…
COLOMBO — Legend has it that a group of pygmy hominids known as Nittaewo — meaning “long clawed” in the local language — lived in Sri Lanka up until the…
COLOMBO — The killing of a young forest ranger by suspected poachers has underscored that illegal hunting in Sri Lanka, and the bushmeat trade it feeds, hasn’t stopped during the…
Kelanimulla is one of the last remaining wetlands in Sri Lanka’s western district of Colombo, and is a refuge for urban wildlife, including the elusive fishing cat. The wetland absorbs…
COLOMBO — The COVID-19 pandemic has sent half the global population into some form of lockdown. Factories have closed, streets and highways lie empty, restaurants no longer serve customers. Sri…
As climate change impact dramatically alters the world we live in, the biodiversity around us is also experiencing rapid and alarming changes. For dragonflies and damselflies (odonates), having an amphibious…
COLOMBO — On April 22, Sri Lanka eased its nationwide lockdown that was imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. That sparked a buying rush for essential goods, primarily food.…
UDUDUMBARA, Sri Lanka — Twelve years ago, as a young undergraduate, Kanishka Ukuwela was trekking with his colleagues in the Ududumbara area along the 18 Hairpin Bends, a 6-kilometer (4-mile)…
KALPITIYA, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka is known for the blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) that occur throughout the year in the waters around this Indian Ocean island. But a lesser-known…
TISSAMAHARAMA, Sri Lanka – Yala National Park in southern Sri Lanka is the most visited wilderness area in the country. From the nearby town of Tissamaharama, would-be visitors leave before…
COLOMBO — Not everyone wants to check these fearsome creatures out, but as a photographer, I find saltwater or estuarine crocodiles quite fascinating to watch. The largest reptile on Earth,…
COLOMBO — A rare new orchid described from a tropical lowland rainforest in Sri Lanka now bears the name of two of the island’s pioneering forest ecologists. A new paper…
COLOMBO — A researcher and passionate advocate of school sanitation and catchment conservation, Kusum Athukorala is a community water practitioner who works closely with water-stressed communities, promoting conservation of the…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka imposed a lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 16, but residents of this Indian Ocean island had been panic buying various foods and…
YALA, Sri Lanka — Gemunu is one of about 350 elephants in Yala National Park, the most visited in Sri Lanka. It’s thanks to these visitors that he’s developed a…
COLOMBO — She’s 80 years old, but Baby Nona can still recall the day she contracted chickenpox as a teenager. Her mother spread neem leaves, from the Azadirachta indica tree,…
COLOMBO — For Nilantha Kodithuwakku, a naturalist involved in whale and dolphin-watching operations, it’s always a spectacular scene to witness pods of playful dolphins jumping and spinning in the air.…
COLOMBO — It’s a taxonomic mystery that’s been simmering for nearly 150 years, and in the process dealt out a parade of mistaken identities, dead bodies, and a suspect that…
During the middle of March each year, the ornamental cat’s claw vine (Dolichandra unguis-cati) bursts into bloom in Sri Lanka, and this year is no exception. The entire creeper gets…
COLOMBO — When a team of researchers decided to scan some vegetable plots in a murky swamp area in western Sri Lanka, they were looking for live specimens of what…
COLOMBO — Adam’s Peak is Sri Lanka’s fourth-highest mountain and considered a holy site for people of multiple faiths, who flock there in their thousands during the pilgrimage season from…
Every day for the past week or so, I have woken up only to find a daily dose of more than 300 messages on my mobile phone. Piled up overnight…
HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka — Herathhami Dissanayake, 71, a rice farmer from Hambantota in southern Sri Lanka, says he’s despondent about the increase in wild animals raiding the crops in his…
A surfeit of disinformation is hampering public health efforts to contain and counter the coronavirus disease before it turns into a fully-fledged global pandemic. Various conspiracy theories are circulating about…
COLOMBO — A big part of conserving any wildlife species is to conserve its natural habitat. But when that becomes an increasingly difficult task due to human-driven changes in those…
COLOMBO — In recent years, leopards in Sri Lanka (Panthera pardus kotiya), an endangered subspecies native to the island, have been grabbing local and international headlines for all the wrong…
COLOMBO — When a group of herpetologists ventured into Jaffna in Sri Lanka’s north to conduct their first herpetological field survey of the peninsula, they were largely lured by the…
