The Giant’s Canal (Yodha Ela) irrigation waterway built by ancient irrigation engineers is in danger of destruction due to illicit logging along its reservations located in the Minneriya National Park, within the Hingurakgoda Divisional Secretary’s area of authority, environmentalists warn.
Illicit logging done on the behest of a Hingurakgoda Pradeshiya Sabha member by poachers doing illicit timber business causing harm to the irrigation canal carrying water from the Minneriya Reservoir to farmlands of Medirigiriya and Hingurakgoda.
The rich dry zone biodiversity in the national park and the valuable trees such as Palu, Weera and Ebony are being destroyed by the poachers, Centre for Environmental and Nature Studies said it had made complaints to the Central Environmental Authority regarding the damage done to the irrigation system and the national park on September and October 2010, but the destruction has not stopped.
Though the destruction of the forest cover was stopped by the intervention of the Environmental Affairs Ministry after public protest made by the farmers of the locality the same group of poachers are back at their illicit logging and cutting earth along the reservation CENS also said.
The environmental group CENS said they had made another complaint to the CEA about the destruction of the reservation and its rich tropical biodiversity but the politico and his group of poachers were still continuing to cut down trees and move earth on the reservation with impunity. The banks of the irrigation canal Yodha Ela are being eroded posing the threat of destruction of this ancient invaluable irrigation system as the monsoonal rainy season of the dry zone has now started.
http://www.nation.lk/2011/11/27/eyefea6.htm (2nd Story)
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