Mammals of Sri Lanka vacation

Planet

CARBON REDUCTION

In Sri Lanka (as with everywhere we go) we carefully choose accommodation, suppliers and transportation that either minimise their effect on the environment or that help to contribute to its sustainable development.

On this trip we drive in one vehicle and have no domestic flights. So we are minimising our fuel usage for traveling. We have also changed the routing of the itinerary to take into account new highways which make the transfers more efficient during the trip.
The accommodation we use on the trip are all locally owned small guest houses or eco lodges. Many of the accommodation we use when traveling in Sri Lanka are owned and run by Jetwings a Sri Lankan company with a great track record of local community driven sustainability projects.

Many of these initatives are community focused, but some are also directly for conservation and these include the Community Wildlife Education. An example of this is the Loris Conservation Project in Sigirya which features a dedicated information center and funded the first public library and wildlife education center for the nearby Rangirigama Monastery community as well as habitat preservation for the growing population of slender lorises.
Responsible Sourcing & Local Empowerment is also an important part of their ethos across all of their accommodation. Jetwing prioritizes local sourcing of nearly all locally available products such as milk, fish, and services directly from local farmers, markets, and regional vendors, significantly reducing its carbon footprint while supporting the local economy.

As touched on above with the responsible sourcing policy of nearly all of the accommodation we use in Sri Lanka means that the vast majority of the food consumed on this trip is locally sourced and with elsewhere in the Indian Subcontinent vegetarian food is heavily recommended and available everywhere.

ENVIRONMENT AND WILDLIFE

As touched on above, we visit several locally run properties at all locations possible and as a result the local benefits for wildlife and the neighbouring environments is second to none. In fact a lot of the nocturnal activities we will be doing are conducted on private land owned or leased by the accommodation providers and they make a conscious effort to maintain and expand protected areas of wilderness.

By bringing people here with a professional naturalist as well as professional local guides we aim to showcase the environment in full but also to allow you to learn about the problems facing the ecosystems here and highlight the ways that continued development and human exploitation are affect the species and how cutting edge research is countering the problems as well as showing you examples of success stories. We also keep a record of all the great sightings we see on each tour and record the environmental factors, this data is used by ourselves but also given to the researchers who are working on many of these species. All the information collected in invaluable as the knowledge of some of the animals that live here are little understood. We also donate our pictures to the researchers to aid in their photo identification studies where species can be individually identified.

People

LOCAL ECONOMY

All of the accommodation we use throughout our Sri Lanka tour are locally owned and many of our chosen accommodations in Sri Lanka are run and owned by a Sri Lankan company (Jetwings), this company prides itself in the local community projects they run and support. Chief among these are Jetwing Youth Development Project (JYDP). Launched in 2006, this flagship initiative provides free vocational hospitality training—covering hotel operations, English, and cultural history—to school leavers from underprivileged rural families. Graduates are directly recruited by Jetwing and the project has expanded island-wide to regions like Galle, Jaffna, and Sigiriya.
Another major project helping the local economies around their accommodation and the people of Sri Lanka is Thrive (Grassroots Capacity Building) which is a program focused on empowering micro-, small-, and medium-scale enterprises near Jetwing properties. For instance, at Jetwing Kaduruketha, it helped local tuk-tuk drivers become trained chauffeurs, assisted female entrepreneurs in expanding their businesses, and established Farmer Field Schools to promote sustainable organic agriculture.

For our part, as well as using these wonderful accommodations run by Jetwing we also make sure that all of our guides and drivers for Sri Lankan tours are local to the country and we employ as many local guides as possible in individual forests where local expertise is highly valued.

This not just helps in supporting the local people with income direct from wildlife tourism but these local people often have much better local knowledge of the wildlife.

As we cover a large amount of ground on this exploration of Sri Lanka we make various stops for supplies and these are all done at small locally owned shops, where available. We often include cultural activities such as visiting locally run handicraft markets as part of our transfered through certain towns and villages.

EMPLOYMENT, INCLUSIVITY & DIVERSITY

All of the people employed as part of this trip are from Sri Lanka and many of the drivers we employ are from the local communities we are visiting for wildlife.

We work hard to provide a genuine pathway from driver to guide, by helping educate English speaking as well as providing coaching and informal training on guiding techniques. We also donate equipment which can help in this progression in the form of binoculars, field guide books and torches.

This trip, like all of our trips, is LGBTQ+ friendly.

Most of the trip is conducted from vehicles, but there are some hikes which are important (such as when in Sinharaja Forest) and so walking along forest trails which are uneven is essential. So people with severe mobility issues will struggle, the trip is not wheelchair safe.