ECO-V helps children to go to school in 2009.

At the beginning of the year 2009 we got a request from Major. Danaranjana from Sri Lanka Army to help some school children to go to school. Major Danaranjana has been helping us since we started working in North Central Province in 2004. Therefore, I did not want to think twice about that humble request as we have previous experience in carrying out project like this with is coordination. Beginning of 2008 we helped 62 children to go to school. This year we had a very short period to work on this as I was getting ready to go to India. Therefore I only send an email to some of my friends and relatives mentioning about the requirement of making school packs. With the help of them and their contacts we were able to make 25 school packs which included a school bag, book, colour pencils, pastel, pens, pencils and a pencil case. A friend of Yasas donated all the school bags needed and we bought enough exercise books for 25 children. Major Danaranjana took the responsibility of transporting and distributing the packs to deserving children in Ampara area. Last year our donation went to Padaviya area but this time he has found more deserving children in Ampara area.

However, I still did not get the photographs of the event but Major Danaranjana phoned me several times and described how it went on. My team at Kalu Wandura conservation project personally took the responsibility of going to Pettah and buying all the items for school pack and Yasas’s friend has arranged to deliver all the bags to our office. ECO-V thanks Jayani, Ramani, Madhubahshini, Jeevan, and Yasas for their helpfulness and thoughtfulness for our sons and daughters of Sri Lanka with their generous contributions. Photos attached here are taken when my team was making the school packs at our office.

Kalu Wandura team in the field!

On the 23rd of January Kalu Wandura project team, Devaka, Ramyanath, Tharaka, Indika and Chatura went to Waga field station with all the equipment. Harsha was also there with them as an experienced ECO-V member as he was very successful in developing Udawalwa field station two years ago. They were busy whole day cleaning the house and getting ready for next day till I went to have the house warming ceremony. I went to Waga along with my family (Thushara, Boo, Nipu and my mother) next day morning. We all met at the Waga Kahahena temple and met Ven. Kahahena Sri Medananda thero and got his blessings. He was the main person helped us at the beginning when we conducted Waga exhibition on kalu wanduara. Jaliya and Srinath (whom Dr. Rudran trained last October) were also there as they were villagers of the adjacent village to our field station. We had a field visit to the forest entrance but did not enter to the forest as we still do not have permission from the Forest Department. We recorded many fish species and birds from the surrounding area leading to forest and all team members are exited about the work.

Next few days kept us busy on getting permission and making plans for the community survey. Mr. Danasekara, Manager of the Pussella Plantations and Mr. Indika, Grama Niladari of Lahirugama, Welikanna were very helpful in finding the field station and always look after our need now.

Finding solutions and mitigation methods of Human/Kalu wandura conflict and safeguarding its survival are the challenges ahead for us. We hope to achieve it slowly with the commitment of the young team of “Friends of Kalu Wnadura” we are going to form in Waga area.

Happy New Year 2009

May I wish you all a very happy new year! I hope it is not too late to wish you and anyway this is our first blog entry for the 2009.

The year started with a really busy schedule. All ECO-V project staff members got together on the 1st January and started working on Monkey project. Still we all are in a stage where there are many questions in our minds about the methodology, field accommodation, data etc. We went to Waga on 1st January afternoon and found a place for all of us to stay during the project period. However the confirmation is still pending. I had a long discussion with Dr. Rudy on the 1st and did able to get more valuable advice from him.

The next day I had to fly to Bangalore, India to meet Ramesh Kannan at ATREE (Ashoka Trust for research in Ecology and the Environment). The purpose of the visit to Bangalore is to participate in a conference on Forest Invasive plant species. It was an International conference on this subject where there were many important speakers present from US, UK, South Africa and many other South Asian Countries. The symposium was held in Bangalore from 4th to 6th and following the course there was a field study tour organized by ATREE where we had a very good experience on Lantana Camara Management. We traveled to Male Madeshvaran Forest Reserve (M M Hills in Eastern Ghats) and Bilgiri Rangaswami Temple (B.R.T Sanctuary in Western Ghats) to see the level of Lantana camara spread as under story. It is really alarming and impossible to eradicate. We also did able to get a very good experience in how Lantana can be used to make furniture. India has a good potential for marketing furniture made out of lantana sticks and is also a good substitute for Rattans, obviously cheaper than cane products.

ATREE also agreed to develop the partnership with ECO-V in combating invasive plant species and I am sure their experience will be very useful for us to make it a success.

Visit of Ramesh Kannan to ECO-V

Ramesh Kannan whom I met in Chattanooga, USA during the Society for Conservation Biology conference visited us last week. He is attached to the Ashoka Trust for Research Ecology and Education (ATREE) India and working on Lantana camera, one of the invasive plant species in the world. He was very keen on starting a collaborative project with ECO-V on managing this species in Sri Lanka. We had a meeting with the Department of Wildlife and further discussed this issue. ECO-V will be acting as the local focal point for the project. I took Ramesh to Udawalawa to show him our project area for Pelicans where Lantana is a problem for the natural habitat there. He also visited the paper making project using Eichornia crassipes (Water Hyacinth) which is another problematic invasive plant damaging the water bodies. This project is successfully conducted by our dear friends Mr. Sakith and Richrd Perera.

Incidentally Prof. Sarah Hawkins from University of Cambridge was also with us and she has been helping ECO-V in many ways since its inception.

Two new volunteers join ECO-V

Gayan Tharaka who has been a member of ECO-V for past 3 years, joined ECO-V as full time volunteer at our new office. Now he is helping us in organizing the news letter and member correspondence. He lives close to the ECO-V new office. He has already formed a group of youth who are enthusiastic about protecting nature and we started technical guidance for them recently.

Devaka Jayamanna was recruited as the field coordinator to newly started Kalu Wandura Conservation Project (Protection of Purple faced langur) under supervision of Dr. Rudy Rudran from Smithsonian Institute. Devaka has experience with Young Zoologists’ Association of Sri Lanka and has participated in several environmental researches conducted by different organization and individuals. He was also been a member of ECO-V and volunteered in few projects since 2001.

Now he is getting ready to go to the field at “Waga” (off Colombo) from 1st of January 2009 to start the research component of the project. Last Monday we visited the Waga-Kahahena to discuss the project with some stakeholders and to find a place for the research station we are going to establish. We also recruited Ramyanath as Devaka’s assistant to help the data collection. Jaliya whom we have already trained during the last visit of Dr. Rudran will be joining Devaka from the village at the study area.

National Tree Planting Campaign

We are slowly getting settled down at our new home facing the Bellanwila-Atthidiya bird sanctuary. We feel it is one of gifts we got from the nature and our bird check list is going higher and higher day by day. Especially as this is the migratory season we are getting more birds in and around our garden. While enjoying the nature Kanchana had to spend time between Udawalawa and Anuradhpura delivering lectures and participating in the project activities.

We were invited for the National tree planting campaign organized by the Department of Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka two weeks ago. The Minister of Environment Mr. Champika Ranawaka was the chief guest and it was held at Udawalawa National park.

Both “Friends of Pelicans” and “Friends of Langurs” participated in the campaign and a plot was given to us to maintain following tree planting. Mr. Champika Ranawaka also inquired about the progress of our langur project and the Pelican project as he was aware about both projects we are conducting in Udawalwa and in Western province. Dr. Suhada Jayawardana , the Veterinary surgeon to the Eth Athuru Sevana (Elephant transit home) at Udawalwa also shared his views and experience on langurs with us on the same day.

We held a joint workshop for both “Friends of Pelicans” and “Friends of langurs after the tree planting campaign. This was the first time some of our youth members from langur project visited Udawalwa . It was an exiting event for everybody as they exchanged ideas and experience of two different projects and also different climatic conditions.

During the last weekend we participated at another programme of Holistic approach to motherhood at Kalutara where 200 pregnant mothers with their spouses participated .Kanchana also delivered a lecture on Child and environment to 50 parents at Moratuwa on Sunday as a part of a programme conducted by Ministry of Labor to combat child abuse and child labor.

Dr. Rudy Rudran was back in Sri Lanka

October was a busy month for both of us and we moved in to our new home. We located ECO-V office also in the new premises and its more spacious and there is enough space for our volunteers. Still we are unpacking and getting the things in place.

However Dr. Rudy was in Sri Lanka at the same time and he wanted to start the training for Western Purple-faced Langur project volunteers. Therefore we organized trainers of training (TOT) programme at Polonnaruwa at the very famous Primate Study Centre run by Dr. Wolf Dittus. This was mainly on identification of primates in Sri Lanka. At the same time we gave the initial training of bird watching, butterfly identification and field techniques. There were 10 participants at the training and we ran it for three days. We have already planned 4 more training programmes in future for the same batch.We will be starting more formal training with more new participants as we launched the Kate Stoke Memorial training course for our volunteers at Polonnaruwa with this TOT. There were 5 participants from the “Friends of Pelicans” team and they will act as trainers for the future trainees. Dr. Rudy is very much keen on training and has agreed to be the advisor for future ECO-V conservation training programmes. He had also given us more instructions and advices on establishing the proposed training centre and developing courses as he is having experience in similar projects during his career at Smithsonian Institute USA.

I traveled to Udawalawa again this month and formed the second group of “Friends of Pelicans” youth group as A/L exams are over and there are youth who are interested in joining us. Harsha is fully involved with the project and conducts weekly lessons on environmental conservation. He is using all his skills he acquired at CLP training and at Durrell where he was trained earlier. “Friends of Pelicans” group is now very popular at Udawalwa area and we are getting more volunteer feedback.

Meantime Kanchana continued to address the youth groups of National youth services council programme and busy with preparing the course module for their environmental conservation programme. She addressed the 3rd batch of youth (1500 youth) and two more batches to go.

As usual we are busy with the ECO-V as well as other work and we will update all of you on the progress of our projects.