The Cabinet has approved the declaration of 682 hectares at Nakolagane in Kurunegala as a wildlife sanctuary, and a little under seven hours later the environmental group whose litigation produced that outcome said elephant fences are being rebuilt in the same area in defiance of the same court order.

Both accounts came from the Daily Mirror on Tuesday, the Cabinet decision at 1.54 p.m. and the objection at 8.36 p.m. Neither filing refers to the other. Read together they describe a single Supreme Court order being complied with and allegedly breached on the same day.

What the Cabinet approved

The 682 hectares lie in the Galgamuwa Divisional Secretariat Division and will be declared the Nakolagane Wildlife Sanctuary under the Fauna and Flora Protection Ordinance.

The decision follows a Supreme Court order directing that the whole area — including roughly 55 hectares of cleared land and the remaining forest — be declared either a sanctuary or an elephant management reserve under Section 2(2) of the Ordinance. A joint survey by the Survey Department and the Department of Wildlife Conservation fixed the 682-hectare figure.

The land had been forested for a long period before private companies used parts of it for commercial crop cultivation, mineral mining and soil excavation. Several environmental organisations petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the clearing, arguing it had caused environmental damage and worsened the human-elephant conflict in the North-Western Province.

What the CEJ says is happening on the ground

Centre for Environmental Justice executive director Hemantha Withanage identified the matter as the 2022 Supreme Court ruling in case SCFR 350, brought by the CEJ on behalf of residents affected by the conflict and by disputes over the forest land. The fourth directive of that ruling, he said, recommended the forest area on the Surveyor General’s map plus 55 hectares of paddy and chena land be declared a sanctuary or managed elephant reserve under Section 2(2) — the directive the Cabinet acted on.

His complaint is about what is being built inside it. Villagers voluntarily removed their elephant fences, he said, but the Department of Wildlife Conservation has recently been told of plans to construct two fences again. Fences also remain at Ambawatta and Atharagalla, and he called for their removal and for the ruling to be implemented in full.

The two filings corroborate each other on the figures

The CEJ account says the Wildlife Department and the Environment Ministry jointly submitted a Cabinet paper proposing more than 600 hectares as an elephant corridor or sanctuary. The Cabinet decision reported hours earlier puts the approved extent at 682 hectares. Independently filed, they describe the same instrument, and the 55-hectare cleared-land component appears identically in both.

One figure does not reconcile. The Cabinet filing glosses the land as spanning “nearly 1,500 acres”, but 682 hectares is about 1,685 acres. Fifteen hundred acres converts to roughly 607 hectares — close to the CEJ’s “more than 600”. The likeliest reading is that the acreage describes the proposal and the hectare figure the survey-fixed approval, but no filing says so, and this desk is reporting the hectare figures as primary.

A larger number also appears. An Environment Ministry notification cited by the CEJ concerns an area exceeding 4,000 hectares at Nakolagane where residents had experienced elephant attacks — land previously used for mango, jackfruit and coconut cultivation and for solar energy projects. That is roughly six times the sanctuary. The filing does not explain the relationship between the two areas.

A competing claim to the land

The CEJ filing records that monks attached to the ancient Raja Maha Vihara had claimed the land was granted to them under a royal decree. No filing says how that claim was treated by the court, or whether it affects the sanctuary declaration.

Context

Galgamuwa is elephant country, and this desk has covered it before — the division is home to the tusker treated in the field in September.

The fence dispute also sits against the government’s own stated direction. In September the Environment Ministry began issuing vehicles to wildlife officers maintaining a 5,741-kilometre electric fence network, describing a shift from temporary measures toward a scientific approach to the conflict. The CEJ’s position at Nakolagane is the reverse of fence-building: that in this particular area, bounded by a court order, the fences should come down and the land should pass to the elephants.

Not reported

Neither filing carries any response from the Department of Wildlife Conservation, the Ministry of Environment or the North-Western Province Environmental Authority to the CEJ’s allegation, and neither says who is building the two fences, where exactly they are, or whether construction has begun. Neither reports when the sanctuary declaration takes legal effect, or whether a gazette has been issued.

No filing says how the 4,000-hectare notification area relates to the 682-hectare sanctuary, what happens to the private companies’ operations on the land, or whether anyone has been held to account for the clearing the Supreme Court was asked to stop. Nothing reported indicates the Cabinet was aware of the fence-rebuilding claim when it approved the declaration, and no outlet beyond the Daily Mirror had filed on either development at the time of writing.

Sources: Daily Mirror — Cabinet decision, Daily Mirror — CEJ.