Is the Wild Life Department protecting its property or giving it away?

Kamini Meedeniya Vitarana, The Island
September 29, 2008

On Monday the 22nd September 2008, about a hundred or more people came with axes knives and other cutting instruments and proceeded to cut trees in what is known as the Dahaiyyagala Elephant Corridor which is situated on the north east of the Uda Walawe National park. This corridor runs through this sanctuary of Dahaiyygala to the mineral and salt deposits found in the proposed Bogahapattiya Sanctuary north of Veli Oya and was declared so by gazette notification on June 07 2002. gazette number 1239/28

What the invaders were trying to do is to close this corridor by building a fence across it and so preventing the elephants from going to Bogahapattiya . This will create a huge human elephant conflict as enraged elephants try to go to their source of salt and minerals through other land cultivated by human beings.

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