Twenty further forests across six districts will be declared forest reserves under a gazette notification due to be issued on Saturday, Environment Minister Dr. Dammika Patabendi has said.
The reserves are located in the Anuradhapura, Nuwara Eliya, Kegalle, Badulla, Vavuniya and Ampara districts, NewsFirst reported. NewsFirst renders the minister’s name as Dhammika Patabendi; this site uses the spelling carried by the majority of Sri Lankan outlets.
The Minister added that steps will also be taken to open a forestry museum in conjunction with the declarations. He gave no location or opening date for it.
Part of a running programme
The declaration continues the national Vanaspathi forest reserve programme, under which tens of thousands of hectares have been gazetted since 2025 in repeated batches rather than a single designation.
Earlier rounds have followed the same pattern of tying announcements to environmental observances. Five Anuradhapura forests totalling 2,169 hectares — Ritigala, Aliyawetuna Wewa, Bulagala, Konketiyawa and Kallanchiya — were declared reserves around World Environment Day in June. In August the Ministry moved to bring 1,500 hectares in Nuwara Eliya into protected zones.
Gazetting confers legal protection on a forest block, restricting clearance and encroachment and placing the land under Forest Conservation Department control.
Not reported
NewsFirst’s brief does not name any of the 20 forests, give their extent in hectares, or state the total area involved — figures that have accompanied previous rounds. It also does not say how many forests the Vanaspathi programme has now covered in total, what activities the new reserve status will restrict, or which agency will run the proposed forestry museum.
Both the individual reserve names and the combined hectarage should appear in the gazette itself once published.
