By Quintus Perera
he city of Colombo which is fast becoming a concrete jungle is to be greened after clearing a few constraints.
A media briefing was held in Colombo this week to announce the efforts made by Blue Mountain Group (BMG) in collaboration with the Forest Department to reforest a 125-acre land in Wilpattu in the Puttalam district. This is a part of their campaign of ‘Greening Sri Lanka’.
Dr. Hiran Hettiarachchi, Group Chairman, BMG said as a matter of principle, they undertook to preserve nature, pointed out that countries like, Singapore, the US and China are turning out to be concrete jungles and the environment of those countries are polluted, also pointing out that most parts of China are covered with a layer of fumes leading to such respiratory disorders, like coughing.
He said that Sri Lanka is a developed country in the sense where the people are happy that they can breathe fresh air, freely and to preserve that condition BMG is contributing its share to the ‘Greening Sri Lanka’ initiative.
Dr. Hettiarachchi told the Business Times that while it is necessary to green the city of Colombo there are a few constraints that are yet difficult to penetrate.
He said that in Colombo land prices are soaring to the extent where the going price of an acre of land in Colombo is around Rs. 1 billion and they are finding difficult to convince some members of the Government to apportion some land to preserve nature. He was pointed out that the lush greenery that was there in Colombo in the past has now diminished.
At the briefing, he said that reforesting of this 125 acres is only the beginning of their reforestation efforts and in all their land development projects they separate 10 perches for the nature, for the iguanas, wild hares and other animals as a place to live as they are thrown out of their habitat due to development.
He said that they have been undertaking this type of nature preserving projects without publicity, indicating however that BMG thought of holding a media briefing so that other large scale corporates could take their example and follow suit.
Source -19/03/2017, The Sunday Times, See more at -http://www.sundaytimes.lk/170319/business-times/blue-mountain-group-to-reforest-125-acres-at-wilpattu-232817.html
