Sri Lanka It's Happening

July 3, 2004

Try prounouncing that. Sri Lankans have a tough enough time with it, so foreigners can be excused. Many of my countrymen haven't heard of the place and wouldn't give damn about it even if they had.

Anavilundava is an old man made tank that has been silted up. Nature has converted this lake into a swap, a heaven for birds. That's where we headed off to yesterday. I have never seen such high concetrations of birds anywhere.

Come to think of it, that is not true, thousands of owls roost in each of the trees around the university of Colombo by day, by night their places are taken by an even larger number of crows. Walking under these trees at six in the evening can be quite a hazardous affair.

There were only a handfull of crows in Anavilundava, which is around hundred kilometers away from Colombo, but there are thousands of storks, herons, comorants and many other wetland birds. The swamp and it's enviorens have been named as a bird sanctuary not very long ago. That's probably the death knell for the birds that live there.

Why? the area around the parliament in colombo was also declared as an important wetland and a bird sanctuary. The two major political parties that never work together for the good of the nation, worked together to fill it up and build a golf course and a presidential palace.

This one of the biggest act of enviorenmental terrorism that have been comitted in this country in the recent past. the presidential palace project was abandoned. after feeling up hundreds and hundreds of acres of breeding grounds for countless species of birds.

Another such wetland, Bellanwilla was sold of to a property developer.

Posted by raditha at July 3, 2004 11:21 AM