Whirl with the wind - Kitesurfing in SriLanka
Natasha Fernandopulle explores the sport of the fearless on Lankan shores - Pix by M. A. Pushpa Kumara
The feeling of flying over water where the only form of propulsion you have is the wind and where the only person in control is you is a sensation that most adventure lovers would love to feel.
I bet you may wonder what this is all about. In fact, when I first went across to Buba in Mount Lavinia, I really didn’t know what to expect. Kitesurfing; as in surfing with the help of a kite? This is what I thought and this is exactly what it was all about.
Kitesurfing or kiteboarding is an extreme sport which uses the power of the wind to pull a rider through the water and this is done on a small surfboard or kiteboard. The sport is still in its infancy, but is rapidly growing in popularity. And when it comes to Sri Lanka, our country being an island, kitesurfing can be done all throughout the year, depending on which part of the coast you are in.
According to Mischi Walter - a professional kitesurfing instructor based in Sri Lanka, “as much as this sport can be fun, it can be very dangerous if you don’t know how to handle your equipment properly. You also need to be aware of your surroundings - the wind, water and ground situation,” he says, adding that in spite of all the precautions, “you will have an accident at some point!” says Mischi, so remember to concentrate on what you are doing.
“You need to get over a certain fear point - doing so gives you an adrenaline rush,” Mischi says smiling. “Even children can learn the sport, overseas there are people who are over 70 who are kitesurfing!” added Mischi.
“It’s the best sport in town, and never feel discouraged if you are taking a long time to get up on the board, because it happened to me, but it’s worth the effort and the wait,” said Julian Bolling, adding that the sport brings together some, “cool people to hang out with” and “it’s pollution free!”
“Rugby? Hikkaduwa Beach Fest? Nah, I’d rather be kitesurfing!” says Dilsiri Welikala. “It’s extremely addictive and loads of fun. You’re completely free, and the only noise you hear is of the wake coming off the back of your board,” he says, adding, “When you launch, you hear a sound that’s amazing. It’s just you, the wind and the board.”
“It was in Feb 2007 at the Kiteboarding Camp organised by some friends when I was first introduced to kiteboarding. I was blown away by the dynamics of the sport and what attracted me the most is that when you’re kitesurfing, it’s just you and the elements, the wind blowing hard and the sea all around you; pure peace infused with adrenalin!” was Previne Wicks’ opinion on the sport.
And as the only local female to have tried out kitesurfing in Sri Lanka, Mihiri Salpitikorale had this to say. “As much as the adrenaline rush beckons, out of respect for natural elements, I’m taking kite surfing really slow so I can enjoy it with minimal damage.”
Mads Jansen Raunsbaek, has an interesting account about the development of the sport, “The first person to kite surf in Sri Lanka was a German guy called Ben.”He went on to explain that this was in December 1999 when he noticed some colour on the water, “when I looked out the window I saw a guy with a kite starting from Mambos and straight out through the main point.” He had already had an idea about the sport from an article which he had ripped out of a magazine and recalls, “when I saw it, I knew it was my call.”
This all happened while he was tattooing a client he said, “I was stoked; I jumped up and told my customer we had a 20 minute break and ran to the beach and waited for him to return.” The kitesurfer, Ben, he recalls, had a Naish Ar 3.5 and the first big Naishkiteboards. He gave him a magazine and later had a chat with Mads about the sport.
He goes on to state, “I’m pretty sure that that is the start of Kitesurfing in Sri Lanka. The third person to kite in Sri Lanka was Holger Brummer from Negombo. We met in Hikkaduwa in 2001. Then Dirk Hanel came, followed by all the others.”
“Kitesurfing has now started to grow in Sri Lanka, and that’s what we want,” says Mads, adding, “We want more information about kitesurfing, safety and so on. And just to make it bigger and bigger and bigger in Sri Lanka,” he said.
Source: sundaytimes.lk
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Hakgala in harm’s way
Legend has it that Hakgala was King Ravana’s pleasure garden where he kept the beautiful princess Sita whom he had abducted from India. Today, visitors to the hill country rarely miss out on a visit to Hakgala and while walking around many wonder what lies behind the fences of the Botanical Gardens.
Only few realize that it is the Hakgala Strict Nature Reserve (SNR), a montane cloud forest, as important as the rainforests of Sinharaja or Knuckles in terms of biodiversity and watershed capacity.
Like any other SNR, Hakgala is restricted to all but those who are involved in scientific research and even they can enter only with a special permit obtained from the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWLC).
Even amidst all this protection, the Hakgala SNR (declared in 1938, Hakgala is one of three Strict Nature Reserves and is the only one in the wet zone, the other two, Ritigala and Yala Block II, being in the dry zone) is under serious threat due to land-grabs and encroachment, problems that have dogged it for decades.
These were some of the shocking disclosures at a recent forum organized by the Environmental Foundation Limited (EFL) to launch ‘Hakgala Under Threat - A Review of Conservation Status and Management Needs’.
As much as 25% of the Hakgala SNR has been encroached on, a survey by EFL has revealed. This is indeed an alarming trend considering the fact that Hakgala is also protected by another law which prohibits the granting, leasing or otherwise disposal of state lands over 5,000 ft in altitude. Hakgala being above 5400 ft, therefore, also comes under this protection.
However, encroachers at Hakgala include the Ambewela cattle farm, Warwick tea estate and other small-scale cultivators who have occupied sections of it.
According to the Management Plan drawn up in 1999 by the DWLC, 16% or 182.88 ha of the Hakgala SNR, were claimed to be under encroachment. A 2006 survey has found that there are 152 encroachments, excluding the Ambewela farm, covering about 50 hectares.
“But the boundaries considered in this survey are not those of the original survey plan. They include a much smaller area for Hakgala,” EFL officials point out. EFL claims that the figures cited by DWLC are massive underestimates of the current encroachment problem which its own survey has indicated as covering 150 ha and involving at least 200 households. This together with the encroachments by the Ambewela farm doubles the DWLC figure.
Encroachment by the Ambewela farm had begun a few decades ago, with even a survey plan of 1945 by the Survey Department including sections of the Hakgala SNR as part of the farm. This error had been the starting point of the large scale encroachment of Hakgala, states the report issued by the EFL.
Hakgala, environmentalists point out, is part of the Central Highlands Forest Complex which has been identified as being of the highest national importance for watershed protection by the National Conservation Review. It plays a particularly significant role in maintaining stream-flow over the year, especially dry season flows while also acting as a ‘water tower’ for the Uva Basin and the Uma Oya. Therefore, degradation of Hakgala will affect the whole country.
Soil erosion will cripple large-scale hydro projects like Uma Oya and Rantambe by reducing water inflow. The sediments which will be deposited in the waterways due to soil erosion will flow down to the reservoirs causing problems.
Meanwhile, environmentalists explain that the area currently used as grazing lands have pastures with imported grass seeds that are alien to the area.
The threat of these grasses spreading in the SNR as invasive species is enormous, in the light of most national parks battling with invasive species. The close presence of cattle to wild animals could result in wild animals being vulnerable to pandemics like the hoof and mouth disease.
Concerned over the degradation of the Hakgala SNR and no action by the DWLC, the Environmental Foundation had stepped in, filing legal action against the DWLC in 1988 over illegal encroachments. While recognizing the 1938 boundaries, the court had ruled that attempts to bypass the legal provisions that afford the Hakgala SNR the highest protection should be disregarded and ordered the DWLC to remove all encroachers. Despite the DWLC giving an undertaking to court, no action had been taken to remove the encroachers.
Once again in March 2006, EFL had filed another case to halt further encroachment immediately and remove the present encroachers. The respondents - DWLC, Divisional Secretaries and other government institutions - had agreed to act but once again nothing had happened.
DWLC Director-General Ananda Wijesooriya told the forum that the department is working to remove illegal encroachers. However, the largest encroacher - the Ambewela farm — is not considered at this stage.
World Bank representative Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya emphasized the need for other government departments that are more powerful to support the DWLC. “It should be a collective effort, otherwise the DWLC will get isolated. We have seen this happen in the past.”
“Hakgala is an important ecosystem and it is important to protect it before irretrievable damage is done to the Strict Nature Reserve,” said environmentalist Jagath Gunawardene.
By Malaka Rodrigo
Source: sundaytimes.lk
Home away from home for Hali-ela monkeys
A pioneering monkey project helps sort out a human-monkey conflict. Kumudini Hettiarachchi reports
The planning was meticulous. The operation carried out with precision, because the simian protagonists were clever and could also outwit their human cousins.
The plea for a solution for the woes of not only the farmers but also other villagers came from the community itself. The men, women and children of Moretota, about five km from Hali-ela, who had been beleaguered needed answers and quick ones at that. Humans were under attack - rilaw or Toque monkeys were rampaging through the village at will. A troop as large as 50-60 monkeys would descend on the village, destroy the vegetable crops, devastate the little paddy the families cultivated, even strip the larger trees such as jak and butter fruit, brazenly enter the homes and leave a trail of destruction.
Moretota was literally under siege. The houses were in shambles but more importantly the villagers had left off farming the land. The income of the families dropped drastically while the adults moped around their homes unable to engage in their livelihood.
Desperate for a respite, an appeal went out to Divisional Secretary Vijitha Nandakumara and discussions at that level reached the ears of Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva, for it fell under his constituency which was the Badulla district.
That was when the expertise of the Clinical Sciences Department, Veterinary Faculty, University of Peradeniya, was sought and readily given.
“In a situation like this, the tragic consequences would have been that the villagers would have wanted to exterminate the monkeys,” explains Senior Lecturer Dr. Ashoka Dangolla, adding that his department along with the Department of Wildlife Conservation stepped in to stop the monkeys being killed or injured by furious people.
It was in May that ‘Monkey Project’, the first of its kind in Sri Lanka, to trap a large number of monkeys, sterilize some of them and then translocate all captives to another location where they would no longer be a destructive force, saw the light of day.
The project began with Dr. Dangolla and his team mobilizing the support of the people, who had gathered at the Moretota temple under the guidance of the monk.
Usually in the cities monkeys become a problem due to improper waste disposal or dumping of garbage all over the place, of course, caused by human behaviour. But in Hali-ela, it was due to easier access to “delicacies” in the home gardens of the poor farmers, says Dr. Dangolla.
The villagers themselves volunteered to build the traps, lure the monkeys, firstly the inquisitive ones regularly into them by providing food, until they were confident and would come in their numbers, then close the traps and call the vets. Two big traps and several smaller traps were built by the menfolk while the womenfolk drew up rosters to lure and feed the creatures.
“Then we went along with Dr. Ashoka to sterilize both female and male monkeys,” says Assistant Lecturer Dr. Manjula Jayasinghe, who stressed that the babies or very young ones and pregnant and lactating mothers were excluded from this procedure.
The other team members were Lecturer Dr. Jeevanta Wijesinghe, Assistant Lecturer Dr. Madira Kularatne along with four final-year students of the Vet. Faculty. Of the 52 captured monkeys, only 38 were sterilized, said Dr. Jayasinghe, adding that they were then kept under observation post-op, with antibiotics being administered to prevent infections.
It was then time for them to be translocated. With the help of Additional Director M.C.G. Sooriyabandara and Chief Veterinary Surgeon Dr. Taraka Prasad of the Department of Wildlife Conservation, the team had identified a lush island in the Randenigala reservoir for this purpose.
There are other animals including monkeys there and also food in plenty, said Dr. Jayasinghe. After a nearly 50 km journey by vehicle and a short boat ride across the waters, it was a new home for the Hali-ela monkeys in Randenigala, away from the wrath and dangers they could face by becoming a menace to humans.
Will they fit in?
How will the monkeys, with strong “family links” adapt to the new environment in Randenigala? Will the “pita gam karayo” have to face other warring troops? Will they miss their kith and kin left behind in Hali-ela?
No one knows, says Dr. Dangolla, adding that research on these aspects have not been carried out in Sri Lanka. But what choice is left, he asks. As jungles are cleared to give way to development and humans encroach on the habitat of animals, the monkeys too are losing their feeding grounds. They rampage through villages and farmland looking for food, and becoming a major problem for humans.
Dealing with the issue of sterilization, he says some people argue that one could simply translocate them without performing surgery on them. The surgery was done for two reasons. “Firstly, since we have not done a survey on the carrying capacity of the island to which they were released, to control their rapid growth. Secondly, controlling the numbers would help us to translocate some more troublesome monkeys to the same location without saturating the natural habitat under the first project itself.”
That is why it is better to try to reduce their numbers and then translocate them to a safer place. Otherwise they may become the victims of human anger, adds Dr. Dangolla.
