Research, education and awareness, and capacity building of state agencies and young people to conserve primates and their habitats and mitigate human-monkey conflict will lie at the forefront of the PSSL’s agenda. Future programmes will support engaging different segments of the community, assisting administrators and policy makers, and even forging strong connections with overseas primate experts, to spread a wave of knowledge and enthusiasm that transcends borders.
Mr Ravi Algama is our Legal Advisor. He is a civil lawyer in private practice from 1982 and has specialised in environment related laws. In 1981, he co-founded Sri Lanka’s first (and only, as at then) public interest law firm Environmental Foundation Ltd. He is a keen wildlife enthusiast.
He obtained his B.Sc in Biological Sciences in 1981 and an M.Sc in Environmental Sciences in 1984 from the University of Colombo, and later a D.Sc in Wildlife Biology from the Tohoku University, Japan in 1993. After returning, he worked for the Department of Wildlife Conservation, and was responsible for planning and helping to declare many national parks that are present in the Mahaweli region today. He then worked as faunal expert for the National Conservation Review of forests in Sri Lanka, before joining the Open University of Sri Lanka in 1995 where he worked until his retirement in 2020. He functioned as a Senior Lecturer in Zoology in the Faculty of Natural Sciences with long-years of experience of teaching biodiversity, eco-tourism, Protected Area and Environmental Policy Planning, and Natural Resources Management amongst others. He was a key player in commencing the OUSL post–graduate Diploma in Environmental Studies for officers of the CEA in 2001, which has now evolved into a full-scale post graduate MSc, benefitting many students. He has also supervised research of >100 students at B.Sc. M.Sc and PhD levels at the OU, building up professionals in wildlife and environment for the future. This includes supervising post graduate work on the loris and the western purple-faced langur of Sri Lanka, He now works as a visiting academic and freelance environmental consultant in varied wildlife conservation and management allied field. He is also an advisor to the Ministry of Wildlife and Forest Resource Conservation.
Together with Dr UKGK Padmalal, she is now working to establish a self-sustaining field project to conserve the WPFL and its habitats, and to minimise monkey human conflict (working with the Forest Department, colleagues and community) through novel approaches to manage fragmented small forests as ecological networks within larger landscapes. As a past member of the National Man and Biosphere Committee of Sri Lanka, she was advisor for the initiative of this Committee to address monkey–human conflict in the country. Dr Dela brings to work her long-term expertise in biodiversity conservation, World Heritage Sites and Biosphere Reserves, climate change, species red listing, policy planning, strategic communication planning, and preparation of landscape management plans and nature-based tourism plans. Her professional work spans the National Science Foundation (NSF) Sri Lanka and IUCN Sri Lanka, and later as a freelance consultant and volunteer in the varied roles of voluntary technical advisor, educator, consultant, and communicator, both nationally and internationally. She was a visiting academic at the Open University of Sri Lanka, and the Universities of Peradeniya and Moratuwa. She is a member of the Sri Lanka National Experts Committee on Biological Diversity. She plays the piano and loves reading, cooking, and all classical art forms.
