Lokaiya Peremadasa shudders as he recalls the havoc Tamil rebels used to wreak on his beloved wildlife park during Sri Lanka’s brutal 37-year-long civil war.
“They would come down and shoot the animals,” the guide said, his jeep bouncing around on the bumpy dirt tracks of Yala National Park in the island’s south.
The 48-year-old tells how he even came under fire himself, while wildlife spotting in Sri Lanka’s second-largest park, famed for its leopards, after rebels attacked a bungalow.
Photo: AFP
“They spotted us and started shooting at my vehicle. They followed the jeep and I drove at high speed until we made it to the main gate where the army and police were,” he said. “They didn’t catch us, but it was terrifying.”
For most of Peremadasa’s 31 years at the park, it was a no-go zone for tourists, except for the most hardened of adventurers who hoped to catch a glimpse of its famed leopards, but also bears and elephants.
However, in the six years since the Sri Lankan army crushed the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), ending their decades-long insurgency, visitors have returned in droves.
Photo: AFP
“Safaris were canceled regularly and the only tourists that came during the war had experience of hostile situations,” Peremadasa said. “We had very few visitors. There wasn’t any work for us and we had no livelihoods.”
“I even heard that they kidnapped a guide once, although I never found out what happened to him in the end,” he added.
Close to 1,000km2 in size, Yala proudly boasts of being home to the highest concentration of leopards anywhere in the world. About 100 of the big cats are believed to roam its dusty terrain, the outer edges of which rest against a stretch of golden sands leading to the Indian Ocean.
Peremadasa said the park is now welcoming about 1,900 paying customers a day, depending on the season, occupying about 250 jeep journeys.
“There are many tourists visiting these days, lots of British people, but we’re seeing more and more Chinese coming,” the veteran guide said.
“The tourist numbers are very good for our livelihoods,” said Peremadasa, who charges 6,000 Sri Lankan rupees (US$44) for a safari lasting about four hours, depending on how many animals have been spotted.
Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority assistant director Anushka Kahandagama said via e-mail that more than 170,000 foreign tourists visited the park last year and another 240,000 Sri Lankans.
The influx is a much-needed boon for the local area, which suffered tragedy when 250 people were killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day in 2004. No animals died, but a memorial near the beach stands as a solemn reminder of those who perished.
The park, first established as a wildlife sanctuary in 1900, is divided into five blocks with tourists kept mainly to block one, where there is thought to be between 40 and 50 leopards. The protected eco-system is home to 44 varieties of mammal and 215 species of bird, with crocodiles, deer and peacocks also found roaming the wildlife oasis.
The end of the war has also boosted conservation efforts and officials expect that the number of leopards roaming the park has been on the increase since the war.
“We think there are nearly 100 leopards in the park, but the last survey was conducted 10 years ago,” an official at Sri Lanka’s Department of Wildlife Conservation said.
“No new surveys are scheduled, but we believe that when the next one is done we will find more of them,” he added over the telephone, without giving his name.
While Yala’s guides are obviously delighted with the upturn in their fortunes, there has been one major drawback.
“The many more jeeps that are out and about has actually made it a lot harder to spot the leopards,” Peremadasa said. “You used to be guaranteed of seeing some after just one or two hours of looking, but now it can take much longer and sometimes you don’t see any at all.”
DOLLAR CHALLENGE: BRICS countries’ growing share of global GDP threatens the US dollar’s dominance, which some member states seek to displace for world trade US president-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100 percent tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the US dollar. His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRICS alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining. While the US dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed
LIMITED MEASURES: The proposed restrictions on Chinese chip exports are weaker than previously considered, following lobbying by major US firms, sources said US President Joe Biden’s administration is weighing additional curbs on sales of semiconductor equipment and artificial intelligence (AI) memory chips to China that would escalate the US crackdown on Beijing’s tech ambitions, but stop short of some stricter measures previously considered, said sources familiar with the matter. The restrictions could be unveiled as soon as next week, said the sources, who emphasized that the timing and contours of the rules have changed several times, and that nothing is final until they are published. The measures follow months of deliberations by US officials, negotiations with allies in Japan and the Netherlands, and
Qualcomm Inc’s interest in pursuing an acquisition of Intel Corp has cooled, people familiar with the matter said, upending what would have likely been one of the largest technology deals of all time. The complexities associated with acquiring all of Intel has made a deal less attractive to Qualcomm, said some of the people, asking not to be identified discussing confidential matters. It is always possible Qualcomm looks at pieces of Intel instead or rekindles its interest later, they added. Representatives for Qualcomm and Intel declined to comment. Qualcomm made a preliminary approach to Intel on a possible takeover, Bloomberg News and other media
Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) yesterday said it expects any impact of new tariffs from US president-elect Donald Trump to hit the company less than its rivals, citing its global manufacturing footprint. Young Liu (劉揚偉), chairman of the contract manufacturer and key Apple Inc supplier, told reporters after a forum in Taipei that it saw the primary impact of any fresh tariffs falling on its clients because its business model is based on contract manufacturing. “Clients may decide to shift production locations, but looking at Foxconn’s global footprint, we are ahead. As a result, the impact on us is likely smaller compared to
RSS