The Demise of Yala National Park

With the meteoric rise in tourism in Sri Lanka this year, visitation to Yala National Park (YNP) has increased tremendously, resulting in long queues for obtaining entry permits. Many tourists queue up as early as 4 am to be able to get into the park when it opens at 6 am.

The media and wildlife enthusiasts are currently taking the Department of Wildlife (DWC) to task for this mayhem that is currently prevailing at the YNP. Of course the DWC does have to take a major proportion of the blame for this situation.

However, this is not a situation that came about recently. It has been building up over the? years. and this particular strong winter tourism season has only compounded the situation. This is simply an issue of over tourism that is manifesting itself at Yala. Too many tourists visiting an attraction or destination at a given time causing detrimental impacts on the environment and visitor experience.? We have been promoting YNP consistently over the past few years, when the park simply cannot sustain this large number of vehicles during the peak periods. It is causing immense and irreparable damage to the environment and wildlife.?

So blaming the DWC ?at this stage is really futile. Damage control should have been done much earlier. By imposing a limit om the vehicles that could enter the park at a given time, and ?popularising other alternate wild life parks to relieve the pressure from the National Park amongst other initiatives.

The DWC on its part should have clearly maintained the limit that was imposed on vehicle entry to the park a few years ago. For a short while, there was a good online booking system where ?visitors could assess in advance how many bookings had been made for each session, and be informed when the capacity was full. However for some unknown reason this system was discontinued.

Therefore, there is no point in now making a hue and cry about this, when the ‘horse has already bolted the stables’.

As a keen environmentalist and wildlife enthusiast who has been involved in tourism for decades, I have been repeatedly warning that Sri Lanka has to guard against this in my ?regular writings and lectures I give on wildlife and tourism.

?My concerns have fallen on their deaf years, and now its welcome to over tourism to Sri Lanka!

Srilal Miththapala