The Cabinet has approved the creation of a national committee to manage the risk of aircraft striking wildlife at and around Sri Lanka’s airports — a mechanism the country is already obliged to have under the treaty that governs international civil aviation.
The decision followed a proposal from the Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation, and opens the way for a national-level body to coordinate wildlife hazard management at aerodromes across the country, the Daily Mirror reported at 2.56 p.m. on Tuesday.
What the obligation actually requires
Sri Lanka is a contracting state to the Convention on International Civil Aviation — the Chicago Convention — and is therefore bound to apply international standards aimed at minimising collisions between aircraft and wildlife.
Under paragraph 9.4 of Volume I of Annex 14 to the Convention, the country must:
- maintain procedures to record and report aircraft–wildlife collisions;
- collect information on wildlife that could pose a threat to aviation; and
- continuously assess the risk of such incidents at or near aerodromes, using suitably qualified personnel.
Collision data must also be submitted for inclusion in the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Bird Collision Information System, the global database from which ICAO builds its picture of strike risk.
The committee itself answers a separate recommendation. ICAO’s Asia and Pacific regional guidelines advise member states to establish a Wildlife Hazard Management Committee or Forum precisely to coordinate this work nationally rather than airport by airport.
Why it matters here
Wildlife strikes are not an abstract risk at Sri Lankan airports, and the problem is not only birds.
Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport was built beside elephant corridors and within reach of the Hambantota dry-zone scrub, and wildlife on and around the airfield has been a recurring operational issue since it opened. The Department of Wildlife Conservation and the Civil Aviation Authority have already signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at reducing wildlife-related incidents there, and in September the Air Force arrested a group over deer poaching on airport land — an incident that illustrated how much large fauna moves across the site.
The Cabinet decision is a governance step rather than an operational one. It does not by itself clear a runway of anything; it creates the national structure through which strike data is gathered, risk is assessed and responses are coordinated — and through which Sri Lanka reports to ICAO.
It also sits alongside a separate strand of airspace-safety work. Air traffic controllers warned this month about kites, drones and lasers near aircraft, which are human-caused hazards governed by different rules but which bear on the same phase of flight — the low, slow approach and departure where a strike is most dangerous.
Not reported
The committee’s composition is not reported — the Daily Mirror does not say which ministries, agencies or airport operators will sit on it, who will chair it, how often it will meet, or what powers it will have beyond coordination.
No filing gives a timeline for the committee’s establishment, a budget, or any figure for how many wildlife strikes Sri Lankan airports have recorded. Nothing is published on whether Sri Lanka has been found non-compliant with Annex 14 in an ICAO audit, or on what prompted the proposal now. The Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation is not named in the filing.
On sourcing
This account rests on one verified newsroom. The decision was announced as part of Tuesday’s Cabinet release, and no other verified outlet this desk could date had filed separately on this item.
Sources: Daily Mirror — Cabinet approves national committee to address wildlife hazards in aviation.
