Wild Life Dept gears for tourist influx

by Gamini WARUSHAMANA

“Revenue of Sri Lanka’s national parks has increased over 100 percent in 2010, with the recovery of the tourism sector”, the Director General of Wild Life Dr.Chandrawansa Pathiraja told the Sunday Observer.

Both local and foreign visitors to national parks have significantly increased last year, the first full year the country went through without conflict after nearly 25 years.

Most of our national parks fully or partly closed during the conflict period and even the national parks in the South such as Yala were in trouble. In 2010 we have earned over Rs.400 million, double the revenue we earned in 2009 which was around 200 million, Dr. Pathiraja said.

The parks earn highest revenue from foreign visitors and the number of the foreign visitors was less than 10 percent in 2009 but in 2010 it increased to 19-20 percent.

According to statistics up to November 30, 2010 the highest number of visitors 218,422 has been reported from Yala National Park. The number includes 65,271 foreigners. The second highest number of visitors is reported from Horton Plains National Park which had 151,777 visitors including 19,584 foreigners.

Udawalawa and Minneriya national parks too have attracted significant numbers of visitors but there were fewer foreigners. The Wilpattu National Park that was closed due to the conflict had now become a tourist attraction during the last year as well. During the period only 13,739 tourists visited Wilpattuwa including 118 foreigners. However, the infrastructure and bungalows have been renovated and the park expects to return to its true potential this year.

Dr. Pathirajha said that the department expects a further increase in the number of visitors to national parks this year.

The department is ready to facilitate them and improve conditions for visitors while strengthening conservation of parks and habitats.

“We expect a large number of visitors to our national parks this year.

We expect the number of foreign visitors to be over 35 percent and the revenue will be doubled compared to 2010.

We are spending huge sums of money to facilitate these visitors as well as for the conservation process, he said.

“There are 21 national parks in the country managed by the department and during the conflict period most of the national parks were fully or partly abandoned due to security reasons. The boundaries of the parks were not marked and roads and bungalows were dilapidated. The habitats are also in danger due to lack of water within the parks during the dry season. This is one main factor for the elephant-human conflict. We have started to improve the situation by renovating the roads, bungalows and construction of tanks for the habitats,” he said.

In addition the department is also planning to upgrade some sanctuaries in the North and provide facilities to the visitors. Accordingly the Madhu sanctuary will be upgraded to a national park this year.

With the boost in the sector the department has faced a shortage of staff and Dr. Pathiraja said that he is awaiting the approval of the Salaries and Cadre Commission to increase the number of Wild Life Officers in the department. “Also we are absorbing young people as tourist guides to cater to the increase in visitors. The civil defence force has also been deployed to prevent human-elephant conflicts and especially trained civil defence force officers will be deployed to maintain the electrified fence and protect farmland and villages from elephants”, he said.

Dr. Pathiraja said that lack of trained tourist guides with ability to speak foreign languages is an issue at present. Since there are tourists from new destinations such as China, we should have tourist guides that can speak these languages and the department has already launched a program to train guides with the assistance of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board.