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MP allegedly backing squatters who could destroy national treasure
The gains of a long struggle against illegal cultivations and other activities inside Flood Plains National Park are decreasing, after squatters backed by a parliamentarian stormed the Lankapura and Onegama areas of the park, Flood Plain Valley Conservation People’s Movement Chairman the Ven. Nikapitiye Chandima Thera said.
The monk said squatters backed by the parliamentarian from Polonnaruwa, illegally entered the park and started clearing land using excavators and tractors.
“This is also in blatant violation of a court order,” he said.
The Ven. Chandima Thera said he had taken part in the ‘Gama Samaga Pilisandara’ programme in Polonnaruwa on January 16. He rejected the claims made by the squatters that the President had verbally sanctioned cultivating land inside the wildlife and forest conservation sites.
The Thera said the President had only instructed officials to give people lands in the buffer zone, not inside the park. He also said the Wildlife Department’s Assistant Director, who was present at the gathering, had informed the President of a case before the courts.
The Thera said the Magistrate’s Court, after a long trial, had decided the lands belonged to the Park and ordered the National Park to acquire them in 2019.
“The appeal from the Magistrate’s Court order was rejected by the High Court,” the Ven. Chandima Thera said.
He said the Polonnaruwa area was colonised in the 1950s and the Flood Plains National Park was gazetted in 1984. Thus, the park had been declared as a protected area under the Flora and Fauna Protection Ordinance and no one could enter the park without prior approval from the Wildlife Conservation Director General.
The Ven. Chandima Thera described as an ‘utter lie’ the lands squatters’ claimed they had titles for a long period. This had been rejected by the courts. The Thera said the Pollonnaruwa Magistrate’s Court had rejected documents claiming ownership of lands inside the National Park.
He said there was no mention of the Survey Department’s 1:50,000 map of the Polonnaruwa District of any paddy lands inside the National Park. This was ample testimony against the illegal claims of paddy lands inside parks.
The Ven. Chandima Thera also said chilie and tobacco farmers who were cultivating adjacent lands of the Mahaweli River in the area had left their cultivations after 1984, in keeping with the laws of the land.
Giving another dimension of this crisis, Parakrama Samudraya Farmer Association Chairman W. Jagath Amarakeerthi complained that the traditional paddy cultivators depended on water from the Parakrama Samudraya and they had been affected by the attacks of wild elephants. He said the villagers were compelled to go to their paddy fields around four p.m. and work until the following morning. They worked the whole night there during the crop season.
Mr. Amarakeerthi said the traditional paddy farmers who cultivate around the Minneriya, Kaudulla and Parakrama Samudraya reservoirs were against blatant and illegal land grab in the name of paddy cultivation inside national parks. They believed this would lead to enormous environmental, sociological and economic problems, not only for people in the area but for the country also.
Flood Plain Valley Conservation People’s Movement Secretary Chaturanga Perera said the Flood Plains National Park connected Somawathiya National Park with the Wasgamuwa National Park. Somawathiya, Kaudulla and Minneriya National Parks again connected together through the Angamedilla National park with the Wasgamuwa National Park forming a ring around Pollonnaruwa.
When squatters had cultivations inside parks, they disturbed this ring, he warned. The traditional migratory path of the elephants would eventually be broken resulting in wild elephants entering villages and destroying some 15,000 hectares of cultivated lands around the Kalinga Ela, Divulana, Kaduruwela and Manapitiya areas, he said.
“This could be the end of the world’s largest gathering of Asian elephants, and it could be detrimental to the tourism industry. This in turn would have a huge negative economic impact,” he said.