More than 100 acres of forest have been destroyed by a fire in the Hurulu Environmental Park Reserve at Habarana, officials said on Sunday.
The fire broke out at about 2.30 p.m. and was tackled by officers of the Department of Forest Conservation working alongside wildlife officers, according to Habarana Police. The blaze was brought under control the same afternoon.
Suspected cause
Forest conservation officials said fires of this kind in the reserve are frequently started deliberately by hunters who enter the forest illegally. Investigators have not confirmed that as the cause in this case.
Habarana forest conservation officials and Habarana Police have opened a joint investigation to establish how the fire started and to identify those responsible. No arrests had been made in connection with the incident as of Sunday evening.
The reserve
The Hurulu reserve lies in the dry zone near Habarana, in the North Central Province, and forms part of the elephant range that stretches across the Habarana–Minneriya area. Its Hurulu Eco Park section is a working visitor attraction, and was named earlier this month among the sites due to move onto a digital ticketing platform under a wider modernisation of park access.
Sri Lanka’s dry zone forests are at their most vulnerable to fire in the closing weeks of the dry season, when leaf litter and undergrowth cure and any ignition can spread rapidly across open scrub. The country is currently in an extended dry spell that has affected tens of thousands of people across several districts and drawn repeated heat advisories from the Department of Meteorology.
Ada Derana did not report any injuries to people or livestock, and gave no assessment of wildlife losses inside the burnt area. At the time of writing no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own report on the fire.
