Management

FOREST MANAGEMENT IN SRI LANKA

Status of forest cover

Sri Lanka ’s natural forest cover is now around 31% of the island’s 65,610 sq km, and natural closed canopy forests have dwindled to 22.5 % of the total land area from 44 % in 1956. It is significant that tropical humid forests, which form the natural vegetation type of the island’s ever-wet southwestern quarter, have shrunk to about 9.5% of this region. These forests are also heavily fragmented and few are more than 10,000 ha in extent. Although much of the endemic species among both fauna and flora are concentrated in the wet zone, lowland rain forests of this region comprise about 1.9% of the island’s land area. Wet sub-montane and montane forests cover a further 1.01 % and 0.05% respectively. ( FD GIS unit) Although about 9,462 sq km of natural forest and scrubland amounting to around 15% of the island is declared Protected, only about 18% of this network occurs in the biologically rich wet zone.

Key institutions for forest management

Two institutions bear principal responsibility for managing the country’s forest and wildlife resources. The Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWLC) is responsible for the management of protected wildlife parks and reserves, termed Strict Natural Reserves, National Parks, Nature Reserves, Jungle Corridors and Sanctuaries. The Forest Department deals with the conservation and management of almost all the balance land under natural forest, including much of the wet zone forests as well as forest plantations managed for production. The Designated Areas under the Forest Department up to 1995 were Forest Reserves, Proposed Forest Reserves and one National Heritage and Wilderness Area – the Sinharaja forest - declared under the National Heritage Wilderness Areas Heritage Act No. 3 of 1988. Since then, a category termed Conservation Forests has been introduced by an amendment to the Forest Ordinance (Act No 23 of 1995) to identify forests set aside for strict conservation.

The Knuckles Conservation Forest and 14 mangrove areas have been legally declared under this category up to now. There are 31 other wet zone forests designated as Conservation Forests – excluding the Sinharaja - pending legal declaration and gazetting. Sri Lanka has two internationally recognised biosphere reserves - the Sinharaja and the Hurulu reserves - managed by the Forest Department. Apart from these, there many national biosphere reserves in Sri Lanka: 33 under the Forest Department and four under the Department of Wildlife Conservation. Many of these are within legally defined categories of protected areas.

National forest policyand trends in forest management

Over the years the focus of forest policy in the island has changed considerably from timber production to forest conservation. In the mid 1960s the forest policy advocated harvesting timber from wet zone forests to meet the country’s growing resource requirements. A section of the Sinharaja forest was released for mechanised logging for plywood production in 1969, which began in 1971. A strong wave of public concern against this resulted in a halt to the logging in 1977. A cabinet decision was taken to abandon the logging operations in 1978, and the Sinharaja forest was declared the island’s first International Biosphere Reserve in the same year. By this time, however, about 1,400 ha - 2, 025 ha of forest had been logged in the western part of Sinharaja and 37 km of roads had been opened up.

The Sinharaja forest thus emerged in the forefront of public opinion pressing for conservation of the country’s biodiversity rich wet zone forests, resulting finally in a reorientation of forest policy in the 1980s and the subsequent halt of selective logging in wet zone natural forests. This was followed in 1990 by a moratorium on logging in all natural forests which is still in force.

Forest biodiversity assessments in Sri Lanka

Forest conservation received considerable impetus from a detailed biodiversity assessment of natural forests through the National Conservation Review, carried out by the Forest Department and IUCN – The World Conservation Union from 1991-1996. This survey covered all (204) accessible (i.e. due to the civil strife in some areas) natural and near natural forests larger than 200 ha in the country. The findings of the NCR showed that wet zone forests are the most important of all forests in Sri Lanka for biodiversity, soil and water conservation, especially as they harbour most of the endemic reptiles and amphibians, about 50% of the endemic freshwater fishes and about 80% of the endemic bird species. The NCR was preceded by an Accelerated Conservation Review (ACR) from 1990-1991 for a rapid appraisal of the ecological value of 30 natural forests covering 48,000 ha in the wet zone. This led to them being positioned for conservation. Concurrent to these initiatives the Forest Department also carried out a national survey of the traditional uses of forests by local communities and has set up a database on forest biodiversity.
(FD/IUCN/WCMC/FAO, 1997, BCAP, 1999)

During the past decade the functions of the Forest Department have become ‘greener’ and shifted from one of production to conservation of the nation's forest biodiversity. The Department now manages 148,512 ha (about 2.2 per cent of the land area) for conservation. There has also been a marked reorientation of forest management practice in Sri Lanka during the past decade with the growing acceptance that complete restriction of the use of forest resources by local people is counter-productive to achieve forest and biodiversity conservation, except when essential to conserve biologically sensitive areas.

The current National Forest Policy of 1995 and the Forestry Sector Master Plan (FSMP) of 1995 (for the period 1995 to 2020) identify biodiversity conservation as a key objective of forest and wildlife conservation. They both advocate reorientation of the traditional approach to forest management by enabling greater involvement of local people in planning and managing Protected Areas. The five-year implementation programme of the FSMP now in progress, via the Forest Resources Management Project (FRMP), promotes participatory sustainable forest management, awareness and extension, agroforestry, rehabilitation of degraded forests, buffer zone development and boundary demarcation around the 33 Conservation Forests, including the Sinharaja.

Community participation in forest management - the Sri Lankan perspective

The realisation of the need to win grassroots level support from local people for conservation efforts has led to the acceptance of a more participatory form of forest management by government, paving the way for communities in the wet zone to play a recognisable role in conserving and managing forests adjacent to their villages.

It must be noted, however, that community participation in forest management in Sri Lanka – particularly in the wet zone - is different to that of most developing countries, particularly in the South Asian region, where local people are heavily dependant on forests for their very survival. Rural communities in Sri Lanka’s wet zone do extract forest resources to varying degrees, but forest dependency for livelihood has been decreasing since the 1980s with the veering of the rural wet zone economy towards tea cultivation in small holdings. High literacy levels and changes in job aspirations among the younger generation are also partly responsible for decreased forest dependency. Consequently the major problem for conserving wet zone forests from the early 1990s was not so much exploitation of renewable forest resources but loss of forest land due to illegal encroachments for agriculture and settlement.

Most wet zone forests are now eroded up to their biologically sensitive core areas as a result of plantation agriculture and the high population pressure which had resulted in large scale deforestation in the past, and more recently because of illegal encroachments for tea cultivation in small holdings. Many valuable forest patches in the southwestern lowlands are down to a few hundred hectares, although they still remain surprisingly high in biodiversity and endemic species.

Participatory management of Sri Lanka’s biodiversity rich protected forests of the wet zone is, therefore, centred mainly on the buffer zone – an area which extends outward from the Protected Area and acts as an external buffer to it. These conceptual buffer zones have no legally defined outer limits, and are determined by the extent of influence and benefit to the Protected Area. Much of the lands in the buffer zones of wet zone forests are under private ownership, and land use is mainly settlements with agricultural small holdings or large monoculture plantations of tea or rubber. Despite this, buffer zone management has emerged as an important and intrinsic component of managing Sri Lanka’s wet zone forests.

Taking these factors into account, a consensual and strategic approach to participatory forest management in the wet zone is now being pilot tested in the Sinharaja and Kanneliya forests by the Forest Department. People’s participation in forest conservation and management is being secured through an ongoing project to help them turn away from adverse forest practices (such as encroachment) by enhancing income generation, helping to increase productivity in existing agricultural small holdings, providing technical and logistic assistance for community-related activities, and enabling greater involvement of local people in the decision making process for managing forests than in the past.

The possibility of a gradual and conditional transfer of full responsibility to communities for all the various aspects of forest management is, however, not likely in the Sri Lankan context in the near future. This approach has been pilot tested in three wet zone forest sites, but the results have indicated that low forest dependency by local people for their livelihood and high reliance on tea as a cash crop do not encourage acceptance of greater responsibility by communities for forest management. The biodiversity and hydrological value of wet zone forests earmarked for conservation, their small size and fragility, and the relatively low level of forest dependency by local people have thus determined that overall management responsibility remains vested in government (via the Forest Department), but with a local consultative framework in place for a consensual sharing of management responsibility - with considerable emphasis on participatory buffer zone management.

Reference: Periodic review of the Sinharaja Biosphere Reserve by Dr Jinie D.S. Dela