Nearly 1,500 hectares of land held by the Department of Forest Conservation in Nuwara Eliya are to be declared protected zones by gazette notification, including areas around major water sources and upper catchment areas.
The decision was taken at a special District Coordinating Committee meeting in Nuwara Eliya focused on environmental conservation, sustainable tourism and the protection of water catchment areas, NewsFirst reported.
Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody, Deputy Minister of Education Dr. Madhura Seneviratne and the Mayor of Nuwara Eliya took part, along with district officials.
Tourism licensing runs alongside it
The same meeting instructed officials to expedite the issuing of Environmental Protection Licences for hotels and tourism businesses in the district — pairing a conservation measure with a step to clear a regulatory backlog for operators, rather than treating the two as opposed.
Nuwara Eliya’s upper catchments feed reservoir systems that supply both drinking water and hydropower, which gives the designation weight beyond the district. The move comes during a prolonged El Niño dry spell that has pushed national reservoir storage to about a third of capacity, and after the Water Resources Board reported seasonal groundwater declines across the dry zone.
What is not yet known
NewsFirst did not name the specific forest blocks covered, give a date for the gazette, or say what activities the protected status will restrict. Nor did it say whether the 1,500 hectares form part of the national “Vanaspathi” forest reserve programme, under which tens of thousands of hectares have been gazetted since 2025.
Sri Lanka has previously seen disputes over releasing forest reserve land, which is the reverse of the direction taken here.
No other verified newsroom had reported the Nuwara Eliya decision at the time of writing.
