Our Heritage of Sinharaja natural rain forest

   Dense,dark,wet and mysterious-Sinharaja is a primeval forest for meditation, relaxation and scientific exploration.This relatively undistubed expanse of primary forest is a Sri Lankan heritage-the last patch of sizeable lowland evergreen Rain Forest still remaningmore or less intact or undisturbed in our island.
  The forest is sleeped in deep legend and mystry.The word Sinharaja means,lion (Sinha) king (raja) and the popular belief is that the legendary origin of the Sionhala people in Sri Lanka is from the descendants of the union the lion king who once lived in the forest and a princess.
   The,the spirit of the legend remains captured in solitude in the silent forest and the rising mist of the early dawn.More than time however separates the modern explorer in the Sinharaja forest from its legendary inhabitants,man has rapidly penetrated the seemingly inaccessible wilderness of the Sri Lanka's rainforest which once covered perhaps over 100,000ha.Of the South Western hills and lowlands. The present reserve in but a glimpse of its former glory,occupying a narrow silver of undisturbed and logged forest,scrub and fern land.It was declared an international Man and Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1978,then a
National Wilderness Area in 1988 under the National Heritage Wilderness Area Act No.3 of 1988 and subsequently a World Heritage Site in 1988.
   To the casual observer,the forest represents atropical rain forest with adense tall stand of trees,steep and rugged hills etched by numerous rocky streams and rivuleth.The value of forests such as Sinharaja are well known for their functions as watersheds and store-housre of great biological wealth.It is a rich treasure trove of nature with a great diversity of habitats and a vast repository of Sri Lanka's endemic species found no where else in the world. Sinharaja therefore,
represents an irreplaceable genepool,a refugia for all those rare
endangerd forms of life,both fauna and flora.