President orders suspension of road construction in Sinharaja
COLOMBO – President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has ordered a temporary suspension of the road construction taking place in the buffer zone and within the Sinharaja World Heritage Site, the Road Development Authority (RDA) said in a statement on Tuesday (18).
The order follows a complaint filed with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) by the Centre for Environmental and Nature Studies of Sri Lanka (CENS), on the illegal construction.
The complaint noted that the road, extending from the Lankagama area to Deniyaya, in the buffer zone and within the Sinharaja world heritage site, is a government project and was being carried out by the Sri Lanka Army.
It also noted that construction project was launched in 2013, but was halted by UNESCO the same year, following a complaint filed by the CENS.
The RDA in its statement said the building of an 18- kilometre road from Neluwa, Galle, to Lankagama running through the Sinharaja forest was started on the request from the residents of the area. However, it said President Rajapaksa has instructed the Minister of Agrarian Services & Wildlife to suspend any developments that will damage the Sinharaja protected zone.
The RDA said no development has or will take place in the 1.1-kilometre roadway inside the Sinharaja zone.
Sri Lanka’s last viable area of primary tropical rainforest, the Sinharaja Forest Reserve, was designated a Biosphere Reserve in 1978 and World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988. While 60% of the trees in Sinharaja are endemic, with many of them considered rare, the Forest Reserve is also home to over 50% of Sri Lanka’s endemic species of mammals and butterflies, as well as many kinds of insects, reptiles and rare amphibians.
Noting that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in its Conservation Outlook Assessment (2017), had cited the conservation status of the Sinharaja Forest Reserve as being of ‘significant concern’, and that the value of forest reserve as a natural world heritage site continues to be recognized by the discovery of several endemic species of plants and animals since the declaration of the forest as a world heritage in 1988, the complaint called upon the world heritage body to initiate action against the illegal road construction and help the CENS protect the virgin forest land in Sri Lanka.
-ENCL