Dilmah Conservation launched a series of events to celebrate World Environment Day (WED) 2012. These activities are held in partnership with the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) and the Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka (FOGSL) for the second consecutive year. The WED 2012 initiatives are based on the theme ‘Beyond World Environment Day’ where young people are encouraged to take care of nature and the environment around them as part of their everyday life and not limit it to one particular day.
Students at the event & lecture in progress
Dilmah Conservation launched Go Wild on the Web and Nature Database on March 15, 2012 during the Public Relation & Education Day 2012 of the Young Zoologists’ Association of Sri Lanka. Identified as one of YZA’s main events for the year, it was held at the National Youth Centre in Maharagama where over a 1000 students from Ordinary Level and Advanced Level classes and School Environmental Brigades from all over the country participated.
Three lectures were delivered by specialists in biodiversity, veterinary surgery and snakes. Dr Jayantha Wattevidhana, Senior Lecturer, Department of Zoology, Open University of Sri Lanka delivered a lecture on ‘Should we protect biodiversity?, while Veterinary Surgeon of the National Zoo, Dr Jagath Jayasekara spoke on ‘Veterinary works in animal health management’. Herpetologist Mendis Wickremasinghe delivered a lecture on ‘Diversity of snakes in Sri Lanka’. Dilmah Conservation sponsored this event.
A colourful handout was distributed introducing Go Wild on the Web and Nature Database to the students during the event. The initiatives encourage young minds to use nature as their subject and create websites that are both creative and educative as well as to document the various species of fauna and flora found in their home/ school environments and to submit them online in order to build up a database of Sri Lankan faunal and floral species specific to each area.
The competition is now open and all details relating to Go Wild on the Web and Nature Database initiatives 2012 can be viewed at www.dilmahconservation.org/wed.
