Cacophony in the Indian Ocean

From where I stand, in a mangrove forest on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, the only sounds are the rustle of the palm fronds in the breeze and waves lapping at the shore. Overhead, macaque monkeys hop between treetops. Monitor lizards slither through the undergrowth.

Then, suddenly, a flash of electric blue plumage — a kingfisher bird — plunges into the water in search of prey. The splash breaks the peace, but only for a moment. Beasts of prey are a natural part of the ecosystem.

Which isn’t to say that all predators belong here. 

Not far from this tranquil spot are beaches, where only a few decades ago, thieves would wait for the cover of night to emerge from the swamp forests. Climbing over dunes to the remote beach, they would sift through the sand in search of a valuable prize: batches of milky-white eggs, recently laid and left unattended by nesting sea turtles. The next morning, a high price would be fetched for these eggs, widely considered a delicacy or even an aphrodisiac, in a bustling market in the nearby town of Tangalle.

Since I arrived on this island, nearly every conversation and encounter seems to thrum with the familiar strain of the environment being pushed to the brink for human gain, from propulsive urban development to the insatiable tourism industry. But I find the more I listen, the more I can also hear another layer building, one rich in dissonance and possibility.

It was a moment when Sri Lanka’s past and potential seemed to meet.

~~

Sihala, Ceylon, the Pearl of the Indian Ocean — Sri Lanka is a place of many names. Arab and Persian merchants christened this teardrop-shaped island Serendib, which would later become the root word of serendipity: the pleasure of an inadvertent discovery.

Splintered by rivers, carpeted with rain forests, and fringed by coral reefs, Sri Lanka is one of Asia’s richest countries in terms of animal and plant species concentration. Alpine grasslands populated by deer and wild boar rise into towering holy mountains, which unfurl onto wide savannas peppered with elephants bathing in rock pools and leopards reclining in trees.

A recent official tourism tagline for the country confidently proclaims to visitors: “You’ll come back for more.”

I often recalled this phrase as I walked through Sri Lanka’s jungles, trekked its mountains, and waded across its forested wetlands. It implied nature would still be abundant on my next visit.

But I couldn’t shake a thought, no doubt inspired by those egg poachers: If everyone keeps coming back for more, eventually, there might be nothing left.

~~

Shortly after I arrive in the capital city of Colombo, Sri Lanka’s largest city, thundering howls and violent rains wake me in the night in my tiny room situated on the outskirts of the urban center. So thick is the downpour that when I draw back the curtains, I cannot make out the lights of the hospital I know to be across the street.

And then the rain stops. The outburst is furious and short, typical of the sparse rainfall events during the dry season when I am here.

The storm swept abandoned bicycles down the road and left drains overflowing with muck and dirt. The real rains are different from these annoyances.

These storms have become increasingly violent and less predictable as climate change warps seasonal weather patterns. I traveled to Sri Lanka to document efforts to rebuild the island’s crippled wetlands into a natural defense against the flooding that ensues.

Streams turn into raging rivers. Mangled trees plow through flooded streets. Entire homes are submerged. Lives and livelihoods are lost. Trust in the natural environment has started to erode, too.

~~

Monkeys quietly observe us from canopies, and colorful birds nurse dewdrops from the tips of dayflowers at the water’s edge.

The day after the deluge, I meet Missaka Hettiarachchi at his home on the edge of Colombo. A breezy attitude, the palm fronds adorning his shirt, and a slight twang in his voice betray the fact he has spent much of his life in Australia.

But he grew up here, in this very house. Antique furniture fills the living room, and I spot elegant carvings adorning the sturdy wooden dinner table, the same table Hettiarachchi ate at as a child. For now, the table heaves with decades’ worth of government reports, scientific analysis, and topographic surveys — altogether detailing the past, present, and possible futures of Colombo’s wetlands.

Hettiarachchi is a senior fellow at the World Wildlife Fund and has spent most of his career researching flood risk and wetlands.

“We are trying to remind Sri Lankans how important their wetlands are,” Hettiarachchi says. Slithering through the urban congestion of the capital city lies a complex network of wetlands and waterways, biodiversity hotspots that double as natural barriers protecting the city against devastating floods.

These spongy wetlands, as I am often told during my time here, represent the city’s lungs and kidneys, for their ability to absorb and purify the water that courses through the urban sprawl.

Over the past several decades, pro-urbanization policies and messaging physically chipped away at these crucial wetlands while enshrining in the Sri Lankan psyche their image as disposable and even dangerous places — reputed as obstacles standing in the way of the city’s brighter future rather than as the guardians they have the potential to be.

For Hettiarachchi and his colleagues, a key part of convincing residents that nature and progress do not have to work in opposition is demonstrating to them that wetlands are worth saving — perhaps even worth loving.

~~

A buzzing sound surrounds me. The noise is in the trees, the water, the animals. The vibrations are disorienting, their source a nagging mystery and a stark contrast from the chaotic sounds and aromas of the urban environment I left behind to get here.

Monkeys quietly observe us from canopies, and colorful birds nurse dewdrops from the tips of dayflowers at the water’s edge. Here in Diyasaru Park, a wetland park in the heart of Colombo, I feel like an interloper in a wild domain.

In local Sinhala, diyasaru means to be “rich in water,” an apt descriptor for a place where canals, streams, and ponds worm their way through the landscape like hallways through a castle. I am grateful to be here with a knowledgeable guide, Ranoshi Siripala, an ecologist in long khaki trousers and a wide-brimmed hat who met me just after dawn for a walking tour of this new park. Tucked among the lush gardens and wetlands are a boat jetty, a bird-watching tower, a study center, and a butterfly garden.

To help guard against flooding and landslides, the Sri Lankan government has cultivated a total of four wetland parks like this across Colombo and drafted wetland conservation plans in at least 70 sites around the country. Officials have also approved other ecosystem-based solutions, including repairing coral reefs to preserve fish stocks and repopulating mangrove forests to protect the coastline from storm surges. Making wetlands into visually appealing parks such as Diyasaru, with recreational opportunities, builds on the mandate to endear locals to their marshy zones. Attracting outside visitors is as important as integrating these landscapes into the lives of those who live here.

Tourism has long been the engine driving environmental restoration across Sri Lanka. But as recent history has demonstrated, that relationship is tenuous at best.

Tourism employs a growing segment of Sri Lanka’s workforce, both directly and indirectly. In 2025, foreign arrivals are expected to generate $5 billion for the country. The stable flow of international currencies is critical to a country that has historically imported much of its food and fuel.

Nearly every conversation and encounter seems to thrum with the familiar strain of the environment being pushed to the brink for human gain.

In the years before 2020, researchers warned of the risks of mounting overcrowding, particularly in the island’s national parks. Exploitative practices abounded, from packing biodiversity hotspots with visitors to setting up tourist activities in dangerous proximity to wildlife — with many operators maximizing profits without care for the long-term detriment of the place. The island’s environment, including the beleaguered wild leopards, elephants, and sloth bears of the increasingly popular Yala National Park, seemed to be gasping for breath.

What happened next changed everything.

~~

The baby elephants roll in the sand and splash through the surf. The elders rest in a wallow dug into the beach, keeping a watchful eye. They needn’t worry. On an untamed stretch somewhere along the Sri Lankan coastline, no one was around to disturb them.

Or so go the tales of Covid-19 lockdowns across the island, according to Chalana Perera, the young Sri Lankan entrepreneur and consultant across the table from me. Dressed in an elegant olive-colored mandarin shirt, he sports a neatly trimmed beard and speaks with an impossible-to-place accent that tells of his international upbringing.

When tourism dried up and people stayed in their homes, Perera says the island started to resemble a “luxury resort,” but for animals instead of people. Wild deer stepped into quiet city streets. Freshwater fish began to tentatively repopulate polluted rivers and waterways. And, yes, elephants lounged on empty beaches.

It was a moment when Sri Lanka’s past and potential seemed to meet, a point that feels particularly apt given the setting for my conversation with Perera in the backroom of a cafe in Colombo. Towering ferns graze the ceilings of the cavernous front hall, a remnant of a historic colonial home. Plastering the walls of this capsule of Sri Lanka’s deep past, Buddhist art depicts ancient heroes and legendary creatures while dated maps outline shapes that the city has long outgrown.

To get here, I had navigated congested roadways bustling with beeping tuk-tuks. The sort of quiet tranquility that Perera describes is hard to picture.

Yet I remember those surreal days and the proliferation of similar reports of wildlife reclaiming their domain around the world — of dolphins surging through Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait and cougars exploring Santiago, Chile’s silent streets.

The more I listen, the more I can also hear another layer building, one rich in dissonance and possibility.

To Perera, nature’s resurgence represented something elemental.

“I just thought, ‘Oh my god. We can’t lose this,’” Perera recalls of viewing his native island in its near-pristine state after having returned to launch a travel consultancy. “I wanted to help maintain what I saw. There’s a lot at stake here.”

~~

Amid those pandemic lockdowns, the dollars and euros generated by tourism evaporated virtually overnight, exhausting Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves and grinding trade to a halt. A full-blown economic collapse followed in 2022, one that left hundreds of thousands jobless.

A harsh dichotomy emerged: While animals roamed freely, people went hungry, and hospitals were powered down as food and electrical shortages rocked its cities.

Reviving tourism would prove to be essential for the country’s recovery. I found myself wondering how the island might build on the lessons of its resurgent wetlands to navigate a more sustainable path. Is it possible to cultivate a landscape here that preserves resources while at the same time encouraging growth and new connections?

~~

A scenic five-hour journey traces the coast by train and bus from Colombo to Rekawa, a coastal lagoon in southern Sri Lanka. Peering through reeds and thin branches, I spot the figure of a man alone, standing waist-high in the lagoon, eyes trained on the water. With a flash of color, he unfurls a mesh of interlaced ropes from under his arm, spreading in the air in a blend of orange and red like a butterfly extending its wings. The net briefly floats through the air before landing in the water.

Slowly and methodically, the fisherman reels it back in, collecting his bounty of a few small baitfish.

I push deeper into the mangroves, following the path laid out by M.P. Kumara. The machete he has dangling by his side is a red herring. Kumara’s scholarly ascot cap, tidy button-down shirt, and his excitement discussing the intricate root systems of mangrove trees neatly fit the mold of an environmental scientist at nearby Ocean University.

The fisherman we left behind is as vital to the health of the lagoon as the team of scientists guiding me through the mangroves. Bringing up the rear of our little expedition, Salpage Nesha Dushani, a senior lecturer at Ocean University, explains to me what this lush and relatively unspoiled ecosystem represents.


“Rekawa is a natural laboratory for us,” she tells me as we trail behind Kumara, trudging through thick earth and fallen leaves. There’s no machete hanging by her waist, but she is clad in the same brimmed hat I’ve grown accustomed to seeing in Sri Lanka’s wetland forests.

The people who live here, she says, provide vital support for field research by sharing data and participating in discussions and workshops.

The goal, the pair tells me, is to understand how tourism and development on Rekawa’s remote coastline can maximize benefits for local communities.

In Rekawa, where job prospects rarely extend beyond fishing or farming, nature tourism could be a form of economic empowerment. For instance, Dushani’s research has shown that tourists are willing to pay more for activities like watching sea turtles come to shore when they know their money will go toward the species’ conservation.

With scientists and locals working hand in hand to protect the environment, Rekawa can feel like an eco-paradise at times. But a walk down the beach is all it takes to see through the mirage.

~~

“Over there,” Dushani says, her voice a mixture of resignation and frustration.

We stand on a rocky outcrop jutting out from one of the wildest and most deserted stretches of beach I will see in Sri Lanka. I lift my gaze from a swarm of tiny, colorful fish darting around a tide pool close to the edge. My guide is gesturing toward a manicured assortment of sun beds and beach umbrellas. Behind them, poking through tall shrubs where the beach meets jungle, I can see the shape of a large open-air hut with a roof seemingly made from tree bark. Children play in the water and run along the beach under a raised Sri Lankan flag rippling in the wind. There’s a volleyball net at the far end of the beach.

“That wasn’t there a few weeks ago,” Dushani says, shaking her head slightly.

Illicit establishments have become a regular occurrence on Sri Lanka’s southern coast. Some spring up only during weekends and holidays, hawking anything from handicrafts and souvenirs to seafood and king coconuts. A few offer full-service bars. A rising number, however, are standing structures, complete with bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. Unregistered restaurants and hotels catering to both international and domestic tourists — and generating hard-to-track waste — are making it harder to keep the environment pristine.

A 2021 set of government guidelines for wetland and mangrove forest restoration notes that fuel from increasing boating activities for tourists in mangrove estuaries is polluting the environment that mangroves need to grow, while the rising number of waterfront hotels are also releasing untreated wastewater into the ecosystem.

When I met with Perera, I asked him why it was so hard to clamp down on unregulated tourist activities.

A “money mindset of fast tourism” has developed in Sri Lanka, he said, fueled by the industry’s status as a critical pillar of the country’s economic psyche. Visitors now clamor for eco-experiences, or at least imitations of them. And the Sri Lankan tourism industry has been happy to oblige.

“We reacted to being on the hippie trail. We reacted to the pandemic. Now we’re reacting to this demand for nature-based travel,” he told me, explaining that a lot of the unregistered or illegal activity in tourism happens because the government can’t keep up with all the operators trying to “make fast cash” with experiential travel.

~~

Not far from this tranquil spot are beaches, where only a few decades ago, thieves would wait for the cover of night to emerge from the swamp forests.

The local communities have the most to lose and gain. In this case, they also have the most to teach.

There’s a long, narrow dirt road that cuts through Rekawa’s jungle, tight enough that the Jeep I’m in must maneuver around rubber tree roots prominently jutting into its way.

At the end stands a cabin without walls, its awning shading a cavernous room with educational placards dedicated to Sri Lanka’s diverse sea turtle families. Scale sculptures of turtle species fill the room, from delicate olive ridleys to leviathan leatherbacks, as big as a golf cart.

Regardless of species, sea turtles rely on an internal compass, attuned to the Earth’s field of electric currents, for navigation. Female turtles famously use this system to return to their natal beach to give birth. Eggs now cached beneath the sand will soon hatch, releasing baby sea turtles to scurry toward the ocean. Years from now, some will return to this very beach to nest.

The cabin and hatchery are managed by the Nature Friends of Rekawa, an organization run by community members since 2012, when the original initiative faced closure due to a lack of funding. The group sustains itself financially thanks to revenue from tourists, who at night try to catch a hypnotizing glimpse of a mother sea turtle crawling to shore to lay eggs.

Proceeds from tourist visits support shared expenses in coastal communities, Dushani later told me, such as purchasing school textbooks or providing for funeral costs. They also pay salaries for egg protectors, men who monitor nests for poachers and predators.

Karunadasa Weerawarna, a wiry 63-year-old in bright orange swim trunks and a polo shirt with yellow embroidered turtles on the pocket, leads me along a stretch of beach under his purview. He stoops down to tenderly sift through some sand, unveiling a buried mesh wiring, marking and protecting a nest from the dogs, crabs, and birds that might feast on it.

In another life, the watchdogs were the ones committing the crime. As a young man, Weerawarna supplemented his inconsistent fishing earnings by selling stolen sea turtle eggs. His colleagues are also reformed poachers.

The turtle nesting site is a magnet for illicit or unregulated activities and establishments, many seeking to profit from rising tourist interest in remote Rekawa. But as Dushani told me on that rocky bluff extending into the Indian Ocean, most of these won’t last an entire tourist season.

The turtle sanctuary, meanwhile, has been active in some form for nearly 30 years. It was a prolonged mission of labor and love executed by men like Weerawarna, resulting in a place where tourism and conservation manage to coexist in a delicate balance.

When he thinks back on his career U-turn, Weerawarna says he rarely thought about conservation as an alternative to poaching. But then, one day, it “clicked” for him, he said. Unrestrained poaching would decimate the population, stripping him of a key source of income. Eventually, there would be no more eggs to gather.

Saving the turtles and sharing the experience with paying tourists was the best way to sustain his future, too.

~~

Back on my tour of Diyasaru Park, it is still early. As we cross a wooden boardwalk arching over the water, ecologist Siripala points to a dragonfly perched on a lily pad. The park’s echoing hum, the sound I couldn’t quite identify, might as well all emanate from this one little dragonfly.

It is an odonata, an order of insects whose presence tends to indicate healthy water quality, Siripala tells me with a hint of a smile as we watch the dragonfly lift off from its lily and hover over the pond. An abundance of odonata is a “great thing,” she says.

It suggests that a place once deeply inhospitable to diverse life has started to welcome it.

The noise is in the trees, the water, the animals.

Soon enough, the dragonfly’s hum will be drowned out by the sounds of university researchers and hand-holding couples, visiting government officials and ardent butterfly enthusiasts, eager schoolchildren and international tourists. I’m told of plans to construct a campsite and co-working space in another wetland park across the city. There, the vibrations might never rise above a whisper.

All this noise is part of the same tension — a cacophony of voices in the drive toward an uncertain future. The hope is that harmony will rise from the din.