Leopards, elephants, birdlife in abundance – Sri Lanka is a wildlife lover's paradise. Here's what you'll find in each national park...
Sri Lanka is one of the best places in Asia for seeing wildlife. The island’s isolation from the mainland, the heavy rainfall of the two diagonally blowing monsoons, and the country’s wide range of altitudes have given Sri Lanka a variation in climate and biodiversity normally found only across an entire continent.
Sri Lanka is proud of its natural bounty. For over 2,000 years, swathes of land have been preserved as sanctuaries by Sri Lankan royalty – Mihintale, the world’s first reserve, was created here in the third century BC. Now there are 100 areas of protected land in the country, and this is the pick of the bunch...
Yala West (Ruhuna) National Park
Best for: Leopards – the park hosts around 30, some of which are fairly bold for this normally secretive cat.
Drive time from Colombo: Six hours
What’s nearby? Top-class surfing at Arugam Bay.
Located in the south-east of Sri Lanka, Yala is a beautiful area of lowland dry scrub sitting on a long stretch of coastline, punctuated by rocky outcrops. It is the premier national park of Sri Lanka, and arguably one of the best for mammals in Asia.
The top draw is the Sri Lankan leopard, a sub-species endemic to the country; in certain areas of the park, the average leopard density is as high as one cat to every square kilometre. During the fruiting of the palu trees in June and July, sloth bears are often observed.
Other animals you might spot include sambar (a large deer), spotted deer, buffalo, wild pig, stripe-necked and ruddy mongooses, langur monkey, toque monkey, golden jackal and Indian palm civet.
The combination of freshwater, marine, scrub and woodland areas ensures a high diversity of birds. Indeed, the park hosts 220 different types, and serious twitchers have recorded 100 species in a single day.
Ardent birdwatchers should also visit Bundala National Park (an hour away) or the Palatupana Salt Pans (ten minutes away), especially for migrant shorebirds.
Uda Walawe National Park
Best for: Wild elephants – there are around 500 in the park.
Drive time from Colombo: Four hours
What’s nearby? Tea-plantation-covered hillsides.
Created to protect the watershed of the enormous Uda Walawe Reservoir, this park, just south of the central mountains, has extensive stretches of grassland as well as scrub jungle and riverine forest. It’s the best in the continent for observing Asian elephants in the wild; in fact elephant sightings are virtually guaranteed, even if you only go on one game drive.
Otherwise, the park is poor for viewing mammals, but birdwatchers will enjoy the presence of fabulously named raptors such as the changeable hawk eagle, serpent eagle and grey-headed fish eagle.
Wasgomuwa National Park
Best for: Elephants – 150 feed on the park’s scrub.
Drive time from Colombo: Five hours
What’s nearby? The fascinating, Buddha-packed caves of Dambulla.
Wasgomuwa is in the dry lowlands of the North Central Province, 40km north of the richly bio-diverse Knuckles Massif. All of the big game is found in Wasgomuwa, but bear and leopard are pretty elusive. However, it is very good for observing family units of elephants, still relatively wild with unpredictable temperaments.
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