BSL’s Member Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo gifted 320 Mee plants to BSL’s flagship project “LIFE” – A landmark public-private initiative to restore a degraded fern land in Halgahawala, Opatha, within the Kanneliya Forest Reserve.
Employing principles of restoration ecology, LIFE will restore the rain forest, enhance ecological functions, habitat quality, species diversity, and the capacity to provide biodiversity and ecosystem services. A Biodiversity Credit Accrual System for Sri Lanka will also be developed in parallel to LIFE, ultimately assigning a unit value for the enhancement of biodiversity and ecosystem services, resulting from the ecological restoration. A Bio Register will be established to record credits accrued by nationally significant restoration activities.
On the recommendation of Mr. Kamal Munasinghe, General Manager of Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo and Cinnamon Grand Colombo, 320 Mee saplings were handed over to the reforestation project in Kanneliya, which was initiated by the Biodiversity Sri Lanka and IUCN Sri Lanka, on February 1, 2022. For this purpose, Mr. Nalin Munasinghe – Programme Coordinator, IUCN Mr. Naalin Perera – Programme Officer – Biodiversity, IUCN, and Mr. M. M. Hanan Public Relations and Communications Coordinator of BSL were present at this ceremony.
Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo is a hotel dedicated to environmentally friendly methods. The hotel places a strong emphasis on the three pillars of sustainability: social, environmental, and economic. The hotel crew is spearheading the tree-planting effort, which includes everything from seed collection to growing and planting seedlings to project management and monitoring planting sites. This initiative began in the second half of 2019, and the team stayed in the hotel to attend for the plants even during the country’s lockdown times.
During the partner field visit on February 3rd, 2022, the plants were taken to the restoration site and ceremonially planted by hotel staff.
