in Sri Lanka - Ministry of Environment

5. Initiatives to conserve point endemics occurring outside PA’sAccording to the NSD, a number of endemic species in Sri Lanka have highly restricteddistribution patterns, where they are known to exist only in one or a few locations. The NSD alsoreveals that many such point endemics exist outside the protected area network. Therefore,these species are at a high risk of extinction if appropriate conservation measures are nottaken. In many of these cases simply integrating these locations into the existing protectedarea network may not be possible. Therefore, it will be desirable to develop other conservationmodels such as community-based conservation actions where local communities and civilsociety can play a major role in conserving these species. The NSD provides a platform toidentify such point endemics. Therefore, it is proposed that such point endemics that needsimmediate conservation action should be identified and management plans prepared for theirconservation.Area of focus (links)ResponsibleInstitution/sTechnical support Time FrameIdentify point endemics thatoccur outside the PA networkBDS NASCAG June 2013Prepare management plans toconserve these point endemicsDWC, FD, CEA NASCAG, December 2013Implementation of theseDWC, FD, CEA,management plansNGO’sNASCAG January 2014BDS - Biodiversity Secretariat, NASCAG - National Species Conservation Advisory Group, DWC - Department of WildlifeConservation, FD - Forest Department, CEA - Central Environment Agency, NGO - Non Governmental Agencies6. Develop a research agenda for threatened species and initiate island-wide surveyson biodiversityOne of the major constraints during the Redlisting process was lack of data, except for theirdistribution, on most of the evaluated taxa. Even baseline data, particularly for invertebrates,is not available for several key ecosystems in Sri Lanka. The BDS over the past few yearshas provided seed grants to researchers to conduct investigations on threatened species aswell as critical ecosystems that have lead to a wealth of new information. However, BDS doesnot have the capacity to sustain such research at a large scale due to limited amount of fundsavailable at its disposal. Therefore, a sustainable funding mechanism to support such researchinitiatives should be established in collaboration with funding agencies such as National ScienceFoundation and National Research Council. Therefore, it is essential that a research agenda isdeveloped to fill these gaps. Further, national expertise on many invertebrate and lower planttaxa is inadequate due to lack of trained personnel. Therefore, investment in capacity buildingin areas where expertise is lacking or weak is also a timely need. BDA have held a series ofworkshops on such lower taxa as well as produced communication tools to popularize studyof such taxa. These activities needs to be continued and expanded to other areas of Sri Lankawith the aim of establishing regional groups using the university network as hubs. Anotherconstraint faced during redlisting is the inability to assess temporal changes for most speciesas data has not been gathered using standard procedures. The following set of activities isproposed to overcome these limitations.350