Into the wild

Without knowing it, we utilize hundreds of products each day that owe their origin to wild animals and plants. According to Norman Myers, the author of "A Wealth of Nations", Our welfare is intimately tied up with the welfare of wildlife. "Well may conservationists proclaim that by saving the lives of wild species, we may be saving our own."

After all what are we without the animals, birds and the plants around us? As Chief Seattle said "If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit."

Once you have heard the birds, known the swish of the deer through knee-length grass and smelt the earth after the monsoons, you are never again going to be fully happy about the cities and towns that you carry like a crippling weight upon your back.

In such a context one of the greatest roles of photography is to record and preserve images of the world around us worthy to be handed down as a heritage for all generations.

We hope these photographs of Yala will have the capability of enhancing your awareness of nature's pulchritude.

With the gates of the park at Palatupana to be opened soon, enabling visitors to enter Block One, we hope in 2008 more steps will be taken to preserve and secure the ecosystems of our land. It is best to remember that understanding is the single most important factor in saving all wildlife.

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Aditha