Elephant Project bags PATA Gold Award 2018
Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts together with their ecotourism arm ‘Nature Trails’, was recognized for their ground-breaking elephant conservation project by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) for the PATA Grand and Gold Awards 2018.
Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts will be honoured with the Gold Award for the Best Ecotourism Project under the Environment category at the awards ceremony that will take place in Langkawi, Malaysia in September during the PATA Travel Mart 2018.
‘We take great pride in the work that we do to promote responsible tourism in Sri Lanka, and the Cinnamon Elephant Project is one that is extremely significant to us due to the critical nature of this sensitive issue and that this would give us a greater opportunity to create more awareness of our efforts and encourage best practices in eco-tourism especially concerning elephants and their habits’ stated Chitral Jayatillake, Head of Nature Trails at Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts.
‘We are truly honoured by this PATA Gold Award for our work, and trust that this would create more awareness of our efforts and encourage best practices in ecotourism across the island and among tourists. We thank PATA for this wonderful honour’ he added.
The PATA Awards 2018 attracted 200 entries from 87 organizations and individuals worldwide. An independent judging committee consisting of fourteen senior executives from the global travel, tourism and hospitality sectors selected the winners.
Dr. Mario Hardy, PATA CEO, stated in an official announcement released by PATA, ‘This year’s winners exemplify the true values of the Association in working towards a more responsible travel and tourism industry in the Asia Pacific region’.
Considered to be among the 10 greatest natural animal spectacles in the world, the Elephant Gathering is the largest wild gathering of the Asian elephant, occurring annually within the safety of the protected Minneriya and Kaudulla National Parks in the North Central Province of Sri Lanka.
The Cinnamon Elephant Project, a collaborative effort initiated in 2014, between Nature Trails and Centre for Conservation and Research with full funding support from John Keells Foundation. This integrates both long-term conservation efforts of the endangered Asian elephant, and inclusive ecotourism practices in Sri Lanka through elephant viewing based on this annual elephant gathering.
The team successfully completed the first phase of the project in 2017 where over 70 elephants were identified, named and photo-catalogued. Phase two of the project was activated in early 2018 with the collaring of the matriarchs of two elephant herds with support from the Department of Wildlife Conservation (DWC), which enabled state-of-the-art satellite and GPS tracking of the two herds after the dispersion of the gathering.
Data gathered from tracking both collared matriarchs will help understand the exact seasonal movement of the elephant herds, and help tackle human-elephant conflicts through better land and water management recommendations. This also facilitates effective, long-term conservation initiatives for Asian elephants.