SRI LANKA Sri Lanka has high biodiversity distributed in a range of ecosystems from rainforests to savannas. About 27 percent of the country's plants are endemic and 22 percent of its amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles. In 2005, researchers confirmed the discovery of 35 new frog species in Sri Lanka over the past decade. Sri Lanka is known as a global biodiversity hotspot for its high number of species in a relatively limited area. The island's frog diversity illustrates this point: despite covering only 0.013 percent of the world's land surface, Sri Lanka is home to more than 2 percent percent of the world's known frog and toad species. The island is also home to 3,210 flowering plant species, of which 916 species are endemic.

While Sri Lanka may be known for its biodiversity, this biological wealth is highly threatened—the same survey found that 17 of Sri Lanka's frogs have disappeared in the past decade and another 11 species face imminent extinction unless their habitat is protected. Habitat loss is the leading threat to Sri Lanka's native ecosystems. Conservation International estimates that only around 1.5 percent of the island's original forest remains (FAO figures are more optimistic). Much of this forest was lost under British colonial rule, when large tracts of forest were cleared for rubber, coffee, and tea plantations, but Sri Lanka's forests have also suffered dearly under years of civil war which has led to large-scale forest clearing. During the 1980s and early 1990s, government soldiers cleared the island's rainforests because they served as refuges for rebel forces. At the same time, fighting destroyed homes and displaced small-scale farmers who then sought new lands in forested areas. Government figures show that the army and Tamil rebels felled more than 2.5 million palmyrah trees alone for construction purposes. In the wake of the tsunami which killed some 31,000 people and caused more than $1.5 billion in property damage, reconstruction efforts have only increased the pressure on Sri Lanka's forests.

Over the past 15 years (1990-2005), Sri Lanka has had one of the highest deforestation rates of primary forests in the world. In that period the country lost more than 35 percent of its old-growth forest cover, while total forest cover was diminished by almost 18 percent. Worse, since the close of the 1990s, deforestation rates have increased by more than 25 percent.

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Last updated: 4 Feb 2006