Wildlife officers have rescued 47 tortoises that became trapped in a pond that dried up under severe drought conditions in the Kantale area of Trincomalee District.
Officials from the Kantale Wildlife Office carried out the rescue after receiving information about the animals, and recovered all 47 safely, the Daily Mirror reported. They were released on Wednesday into the Kantale Reservoir, which offers a more secure habitat and reliable access to water.
The report did not identify the species involved.
A district running dry
The rescue is a small illustration of a much larger water deficit in the east.
Trincomalee’s reservoirs are among the emptiest in the country. In the most recent national dataset, the Trincomalee range stood at 27.0% of capacity — the third lowest of 13 range districts, behind only Ampara at 22.0% and Batticaloa at 25.8%, and well below the national figure of 35%.
The Kantale Reservoir into which the tortoises were released is itself part of that stressed system, which makes it a refuge in relative rather than absolute terms.
Wildlife pressure has been a recurring feature of the current dry spell, which the Meteorology Department has described as driven by the strongest El Niño event in 75 years. Blocks 1 and 2 of Yala National Park were closed to visitors this week as conditions there deteriorated.
Smaller seasonal water bodies are typically the first to fail in a drought, stranding the animals that depend on them before the larger tanks show comparable stress.
