Tourism on the islands of the Adam’s Bridge Marine National Park is due to be formally launched on Thursday 15 October, and an environmental lawyer says the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance contains no provision that would make it lawful, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday in a report by Kumudini Hettiarachchi.

The dispute is not about whether approvals were obtained. Provincial officials say they were. It is about whether any approval could authorise the activity in the first place.

Who is launching it

The Northern Province Tourism Bureau, headed by Chairman Dr. Jaganathan Vivekananthan, recently announced it would facilitate tourism to the Sri Lankan islands of Adam’s Bridge. Dr. Vivekananthan told the paper the initiative is being run with the Talaimannar Pradeshiya Sabha, under the guidance of Mannar District Secretary K. Kanakeshwaran.

“Everything has been cleared by the DWC and the environmental authorities,” Dr. Vivekananthan said. Mr. Kanakeshwaran also said all approvals had been granted, including those of the Department of Wildlife Conservation and the Defence Ministry.

The Department of Wildlife Conservation itself has not spoken. The Sunday Times says it telephoned the DWC Director General, sent him a WhatsApp message and emailed him, and also messaged the Additional Director General. None responded.

Environmental lawyer Jagath Gunawardena, an authority on the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance, said the proposed tourism would be “a grave violation of the law.”

His argument turns on a distinction inside the Ordinance. National Parks and Marine National Parks are both National Reserves under Section 2(1), but they are two different categories of protected area, and Marine National Parks were created only by the 2009 amendment to the Ordinance.

Section 5 allows a person to visit a National Park to see animals and plants or to enjoy its beauty. According to Mr. Gunawardena, neither Section 5 nor any other provision of the Ordinance provides for granting tourists permission to enter and remain in a Marine National Park. On that reading, the proposed activities are illegal — and no departmental clearance could cure it, because the power to grant the permission does not exist in the statute.

That is what separates the two positions. The officials are describing approvals; the lawyer is describing an absence of authority. Neither account engages the other directly, and the DWC’s silence leaves the central question — what it actually approved, and under what provision — unanswered.

Whether the rules could be enforced

A former DWC Director General, Dr. Sumith Pilapitiya, raised a separate concern: that even if guidelines were gazetted, they could not be enforced.

“There are so many violations in the terrestrial NPs and I think the DWC would fall severely short when considering its manpower and other facilities to enforce any gazetted guidelines for the unique Adam’s Bridge MNP,” he said, citing the record at Yala, Wilpattu and Uda Walawe.

What is at stake

Adam’s Bridge is a chain of 16 sand dunes and sandy islands running about 30 km northwest of Mannar, along the Gulf of Mannar towards Dhanushkodi in India. Eight of the islands are Sri Lankan and eight Indian. Sri Lanka declared its 18,990-hectare Marine National Park on 22 June 2015.

Bird Club activist Uditha Hettige said the 2015 declaration is itself a vindication of the area’s ecological importance, and that tourism would destroy a sensitive and vulnerable environment that shifts with the ebb and flow of the Indian Ocean. The photographs accompanying the Sunday Times report, credited to Mr. Hettige, show Greater-crested Terns, Roseate Terns and Sooty Terns nesting on the third island of the chain.

The islands are also monitored for sea turtles. A Daily Mirror report of 8 September described an awareness programme held on 3 September to review the DWC’s “Sea Turtle Nest Observation Programme – 2026” at the park, run through the department’s Vavuniya Zonal Office with the park warden, the research firm Pelagikos (Pvt) Ltd and representatives of the Navy, police, fisheries and coast conservation authorities. That report is a month old and is cited here as background rather than as current reporting, but it establishes that the department maintains an active conservation programme on the same islands now being opened to visitors.

Not reported

The Sunday Times does not say what form the tourism will take — whether boat visits, landings on the islands, overnight stays or a licensed operator scheme — how many visitors are envisaged, or what it will cost. No guidelines have been reported as gazetted, and no gazette number is given. The report does not say which specific approval the Defence Ministry granted, or why its approval was required.

The DWC has not stated its position, so it is not known whether it considers it cleared the launch, what conditions it attached, or under which section of the Ordinance it believes it acted. No response has been reported from the Ministry of Tourism, the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority or the Wildlife Minister, and no legal challenge has been reported as filed.

This story concerns the national park on the Adam’s Bridge sandbanks. It should not be confused with the separate proposal for an India–Sri Lanka land bridge, which is a transport infrastructure project.