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 out these fearsome creature out, but as a photographer, I find saltwater or estuarine crocodiles quite fascinating to watch. The largest reptile on…
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…
What is a pest? It implies a value judgment: harmful to whom? A pigeon is not harmful to the pigeon hawk. But let feral populations multiply in cities, where they…
On Dec. 31, a fully grown male Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya) was found shot and killed at the famed Uda Walawe National Park. It was also reported that…
COLOMBO — A group of Sri Lankan herpetologists closed out 2019 in style: by introducing to science three new gecko species from the biodiverse island that seemingly never ceases to…
For the Indian Ocean island of Sri Lanka, it is not a huge surprise to have introduced more than 50 new species just in the past year. For this biodiversity-rich…
Sri Lanka enters 2020 at a time of political transition. With a new president in office and a parliamentary election due in the next few months, public and media focus…
Some 45,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers in the rainforests of Sri Lanka hunted down small tree-dwelling animals like monkeys and giant squirrels using small stone tools called microliths, a new study…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka plans to quadruple the size of the protected area inside its last viable rainforest, in a nod to the ecological significance of the region. The Sinharaja…
COLOMBO — The recent rediscovery of the endemic plant known as the Sri Lanka legume by three young research scientists in a locality in Sri Lanka’s western district of Gampaha…
COLOMBO — The Sri Lankan Navy has rescued 32 sea turtles that were likely being reared for their flesh, highlighting just one of the key threats to turtles migrating through…
COLOMBO — Uthpala Adaranga, a ranger with Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), was initially doubtful about the call he received of a seal spotted near Unawatuna, off the…
