COLOMBO — Fireflies, with their bioluminescent rears, are fascinating species that appeal to people’s imaginations, especially those of children. In Sri Lanka, the first systematic study of fireflies was carried…
From time to time, there are media flashes about leopard cubs being rescued and some reports carry moving video footage of how well-meaning village folk, especially estate workers in the…
RATNAPURA, Sri Lanka — The Young Zoologists’ Association (YZA) is a youth organization that explores Sri Lanka’s biodiversity, and its members are an enthusiastic group of people often raking through…
COLOMBO — In Lewis Carroll’s popular children’s book “Alice in Wonderland,” Alice finds a magical mushroom that could make her bigger or smaller. There are many references to wild mushrooms…
COLOMBO — The month of April is typically the warmest in Sri Lanka as the sun is positioned directly over the Indian Ocean island. Coupled with high humidity, the high…
COLOMBO — The Sri Lankan government is filing a lawsuit in Singapore for compensation nearly two years since the worst maritime disaster in the country’s history. But activists say it…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s animal-human conflicts are on the rise with increasing crop raids, but a recent request from a Chinese company requesting 100,00 toque macaques from Sri Lanka has…
ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka — Current climate models forewarn that Sri Lanka’s dry zone is likely to become drier due to climate change, resulting in water shortages for agriculture. A country…
COLOMBO — The Sinharaja Biosphere Reserve and UNESCO World Heritage Site is a large complex of lowland wilderness that is largely fragmented due to human activity. Walankanda and Viharakanda are…
COLOMBO — Arjuna Jinadasa owns a plot of land full of coconut trees in Kurunegala, in northwestern Sri Lanka, where he enjoys a good produce of about 3,000 coconuts a…
COLOMBO — The fishers in Illuppaikadawei village in the northern district of Mannar mostly use fence fishery, where they erect a series of poles and tie a net around them…
COLOMBO — The Singapore-flagged X-Press Pearl was a brand-new container ship, only three months after being commissioned, when a fire erupted and began sinking off Sri Lanka’s western coast on May 20,…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
COLOMBO — It was a perfect morning in Pigeon Island National Park in eastern Sri Lanka, where a group of tourists in a boat was taking in the rich marine…
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…
COLOMBO — Sri Lanka’s main zoo is bracing for a food crunch for its 4,500 animals, amid runaway inflation that has pushed food prices up by nearly 60% and brought…
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…
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.…
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…
COLOMBO — A year since the sinking of the cargo ship the X-Press Pearl, Sri Lanka continues to clean its beaches of the plastic pellets that the vessel was carrying,…
Malaka Rodrigo is a naturalist with an IT background that took environmental
journalism in 2007 to follow his belief ‘conservation through awareness’. He won many awards for his work and writes extensively on biodiversity, wildlife, oceans, water, climate change and environmental issues.
