The Annual Gift…

Peak wilderness Sanctuary,a tropical rain forest that spreads over a land of 224 square kilometers around the Sri Pada (Adam’s Peak) mountain. It is no stranger for the Sri Lankans because of the historical and religious importanceof the peak. A huge forest area that belonged to the Peak Wilderness was cut down and cleared during the British colonial rule in Sri Lanka (1815-1948) to gain land for the massive tea estates which are still functioning in Nuwara Eliya district. The remaining portion of the Peak Wilderness was declared a wildlife sanctuary on October 25, 1940. Last September the Peak Wilderness was upgraded and declared a nature reserve.

The contours of Peak Wilderness vary from 1000 to 7360 feet above sea level. Therefore, it possesses bizarre geographical formations compared to the other natural reserves of the island. Bena Samanala (6579 ft), Dotalugala, Detanagala, are some of the remarkable mountains in the Peak Wilderness. It is also the birthplace of Kelani, Kalu, Walave rivers and many tributaries of the river Mahaweli. These waterways make fascinating waterfalls such as Dotalu falls, Geradi falls, Galagama falls (655 ft), and Mapanana falls (330 ft) inside the sanctuary.

Out of the 3 access routes; Hatton route, Kuruwita route and Palabaddala route, which Buddhist devotees and other tourists use to reach the Adam’s Peak, Kuruwita and Palabaddala routes go right across the sanctuary. It is home to a host of fauna and flora, including endemic species of birds such as Sri Lanka Junglefowl (wali kukula), Sri Lanka Woodpigeon, White-faced Starling, Blue Magpie (kehibella), Chestnut-backed Owlet, Ashy-headed Laughingthrush, Yellow-eared Bulbul, Sri Lanka White-eye being some of them, and other threatened animals such as leopards, elephants, some rare amphibians, insects and fish.

The gift…

Pilgrimage season begins in December and continues till May, which brings out the peak flow of people into the area. The sanctuary also receives the gifts during the season… lots and lots of Garbage, more than 75% of it being plastic bottles and toffee and biscuit wrappers. It is no magic and not hard to imagine the amount of plastics being dumped yearly as we all know how much of plastic we use during such trip. Being very good consumers of all the fast food, snacks and the mega's easily available in the market and not being strong enough to carry back the remaining (i.e: the empty packets and bottles), we follow the easy way… dump it!

Thanks to environmental friendly organizations and school children, the littered area gets cleaned up annually free of charge. So it has become total responsibility of such parties to clean up the annually messed place. It is time to ask ourselves is this act fair enough? Are we real human with a backbone? What make us carry all the excess food and drinks with us but prevent us from bringing down back and dispose appropriately the wrappers and bottles which weigh far away less than what is being carried up. Instead of that we use to point out fingers to the authorities that the amounts of garbage bins are not sufficient.

Recent conversation carried out with my friends in a forum in www.lakdasun.com highlighted a list of remedies that could be taken to minimize the "effect of the Gifts". Best of the suggestions being;

1. A media campaign - Highlighting the significance of the issue and making people understand the depth of the problem.
2. Educate the children and youth
3. Introduce a Fine for irresponsible dumping of garbage - especially polythene
4. Strict checks and prohibit carrying polythene - similar to what is done at Maha Eliya (Horton Plains).

As to my opinion these are really effective solutions, especially the check points run by the wildlife officers at Maha Eliya is really great and should be praised a lot. Applying such actions needs lots of resources, commitment by the government and non governmental parties, youth and a bit of time. But the simplest way we could contribute to heal this matter is to be responsible personally. That is at least to be humble enough to carry the garbage with us down to an urban location (or preferred to be carried back home!), where disposal can be done easily by urban or municipal authorities. Spread this word around to all of your friends and relatives who will be attending the season this December. This small action would surely be a positive impact on this problem.

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For further reading on this issue read (the article which inspired me with these thoughts!);

A mountain - sized headache, by Malaka Rodrigo

Extracting audio from a YouTube Video...

You find this important sometimes...

Step 1 - Extracting the video

1. Browse the YouTube video required in your web browser
2. Type "voobys" instead of "youtube" in the URL of the video. for an example if the URL of the video is "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qu-bntdMtc" then change it to "http://www.voobys.com/watch?v=5Qu-bntdMtc"
3. Click the download button. the movie will be saved as an "flv" file

Step 2 - Extracting the music

1. Download the AoA Audio Extractor 1.1 (it is free)
2. Install it, and start it.
3. Once the program starts, click the “Add Files” button, and choose the flv file you copied to the Desktop.
4. Change some of the options if you want, choose where to export the mp3 file, and press the big orange Start button.
5. If everything is OK, the extraction will start, and you will get mp3 file in the folder you chose.

USEFUL? Hope so...
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source to step 2: A brood comb...philosophical and other notes

An innovative thinker among the race horses...

Very simple & humble, sensitive but tough, different but very natural, an extraordinary person, a genius… These are a few words used to describe late Dr. Amith Munindranasa, well known as "Amith Sir". We would like to reveal the person we knew during the past years as he was so unique & different from other great personnel.

"He is a simple, noble and humble man…"
On his first lecture back at our university after his PhD, he was waiting in the corner of the lecture room, in a t-shirt and denim as he usual. No one realized that he was a lecturer. Someone said, "Machang, switch on the fan"; he thought it wasn't for him. The same person shouted this time; "Ado, daapan fan eka, kan ehennnedda?" Then sir nodded his head and switched on the fan. After a few minutes he went straight to the podium and commenced the lecture. As "Amith Sir" mentioned later, the person who scolded was sweating all the time although he was seated under a fan, and he was so careful not to look at him or otherwise he would have fainted.

"A living encyclopedia from quantum physics to philosophy through nature…"
He was a strong & confidential character. He loved arguments. At times he gave a hint on a topic and leads us to a discussion; seated on a chair at the corner; watching and listening to us carefully. For us, he was a person who knew almost everything, not slightly but very deep. Sometimes we were afraid to talk as we didn't know the subject exactly. But it was very interesting listening to him. He was a person who knew exactly what he was talking about and an innovative thinker who saw things at a different angle.

"A man with a fourth dimension…"
He never locked his defender as he believed it won't be a big deal for someone with a sense of a fourth dimension to break up into the three dimensional space we have locked (i.e. a person with the sense of the fourth dimension can easily get into the locked jeep!). Then he asks; "so what's the use of locking it?"

"He saw the invisible angle in all things that aroused curiosity…"
Once at Sinharaja, "Amith Sir" was very curious about the mechanism of a spring knife which belonged to one of his friends. He believed that the mechanism used to manufacture the knife had to be a special one, and started dismantling it to discover. Ultimately he succeeded in understanding the principal behind its manufacturing process, but couldn't fix it back to the original state. Another friend of his volunteered to fix it back, and then he explained that the force needed to compress the spring could not be given by hand but in a test lab. The rest of the work at Sinharaja had to be done without that knife!

He once gave an interesting and realistic answer for a question raised at a seminar. The question was on "why engineers are unable to invent things at present". His answer was "the simple reason is that parents today do not allow their children even to break their own toys!!!"

"A man who believed on Nature…"
"Amith Sir" always loved and regarded the natural phenomena. He never was concerned about his health, saying that "We have to accept any matter which is natural to anyone". Our dearest sir would have had thought the same about his demise but we couldn't, because loosing him is a loss of a guide to a whole new world for us.

"All human beings and nature will sing in harmony of your great service…Dear Sir!"

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compiled by: "WUS" & "Nature team" members in 2007

Ahaetulla

Reversten, Knuckles 2007

Bee HERE!!!

Hi all... Welcome to the blog-world of the HoneyBee...

Blogging...
I didn't even know (and didn't even care) what this is all about although I knew the meaning of the word itself. But during the past two weeks or so I happened to read some of the blogs posted by some of my "wild-friends" (what's so wild about them... will come to that later...) sharing their thoughts, and this gave me the first kick to explore what Blogging is all about. So as a result here I am creating my own "BeeLOG" (blog) world!

about my wild friends...
Birding (Bird watching), Camping, exploring nature and all the Wild things associated with them has been my hobby since I started my graduate studies at University of Moratuwa. If anyone think this is waste of time... blame on them...my wild friends... they are responsible for making me addicted...
I didn't have this hobby and didn't know the fantasy of exploring nature while I was schooling. Besides Music, I had anyones childhood default hobby of Collecting Stamps. Scouting and camping were one of my dream interests at that time...but I couldn't do it as I had to switch on to Science College, Matale from Christ Church College and the former did not have scouting in it!!! (It was more focused on education only with a limited number of extra curricular activities, but now being far more better!!!)
But I was fortunate to meet Himesh (well known as "Kurulla" in our batch) who taught me the ABC's of birding and at the mean time I had my first ever birding experience at reversten, Matale guided by Kashyapa (a medical student of University of Peradeniya by that time...got to know through the Hewage brothers, Sanjaya and Sameera.
Thanks to the societies "Nature team" and the "World University Service",I was able to recover my childhood dream of camping and exploring the wild during my university life. Since then the number of "wild friends" of mine has been keeping on increasing... Bayya, Daasa, Kawwa, Galaa, Saj, Wanni, Alaya, Gona, Anjula, Ruwani being a very few of them.
After all I don't think it has been a waste of time being with my "Wild Friends" as I have gained a lot...

Nature, Wildlife, Environment, photography, history, traveling, pollution, Engineering, Biology, Architecture, Science & Technology... any subject you name...there's something to discover while being with them...