The Knuckles, home to a vast variety of fauna and flora and one of the most unique eco-systems in Sri Lanka and South Asia is being threatened. Constructions in the form of tourist bungalows have started to come up and the authorities turn a blind eye. Although such action would cause the delinquents to be put behind bars in some other parts of the world, nothing appears to be going wrong for them here. Even, the people who talk incessantly about the possible genetic exploitation of our fauna and flora through foreign intervention seem to ignore the more obvious exploitations of this nature. The future repercussions of tolerating this kind of constructions can never be over-estimated. In this context, it is worth to note that Knuckles is the area which feeds the waterways reaching the drier North-eastern part of the island.
Some of the recent developments related to this topic can be summarized
as below:
mid 1999 - News about the construction of the above tourist bungalow appears in DIVAINA
newspaper with photos
mid 2002 - Plans to evacuate the cardamom planters who have encroached into the Knuckles
forest
early 2004 - Knuckles to be proposed as a World Heritage site while Tourist bungalows
begin to mushroom on the plains of Knuckles
This photo was taken by yours truly during his visit to the area in mid-2002. It is hoped
that it wouldn't put him under unforeseen circumstances.