Blocks 1 and 2 of Yala National Park will be closed to the public from September 14 to October 15 because of drought conditions in the area, the Department of Wildlife Conservation has announced.
The two blocks are the park’s most visited sections and the ones most closely associated with Yala’s leopard population. Neither Ada Derana nor the Daily Mirror reported whether the park’s remaining blocks will stay open during the month-long closure, and the department did not set out what visitors holding bookings for the period should do.
A park already being trucked water
The closure follows months of worsening conditions inside the park. The Wildlife Conservation Department has been trucking water into Yala daily using three bowsers and running solar-powered pumps to fill small ponds at six locations, measures reviewed when Environment Minister Dr. Dammika Patabendi visited the park on August 16.
Yala’s difficulties mirror conditions across the dry zone. Wildlife officers began trucking water into Wilpattu in late July after tanks in that park’s eastern zone ran dry, and bowsers have been dispatched to forest reserves and national parks nationwide as small tanks empty across the dry zone.
Closing a national park during the driest weeks is a long-standing management practice in Sri Lanka: it reduces vehicle pressure on animals concentrated around the few remaining water sources and allows habitat and infrastructure work while conditions are at their harshest.
Wider drought picture
The announcement lands amid a broad El Niño-driven dry spell. More than 84,000 people across several districts have been affected by dry weather, the government has allocated Rs. 3 billion in compensation to farmers, and Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa this week called for advance preparation for El Niño and La Niña conditions.
The Meteorological Department has separately warned that El Niño could bring heavy rainfall and flooding in October and November — which would fall immediately after the scheduled reopening date.
