Alliance Finance supports Leopard conservation efforts
Alliance Finance Company PLC (AFC) has signed up with the Wilderness and Wildlife Conservation Trust (WWCT), founded by well known ecologist and conservationist Anjali Watson and her husband, Dr Andrew Kittle, to foster human-leopard co-existence in the Central Highlands of Sri Lanka among people and leopards, the largest cat in the country.
The third oldest finance company in Sri Lanka with a focus on three bottom-line principals—people, planet and profit—will provide financial assistance towards the pioneering couple’s project and adopt the upcountry leopard as brand ambassador for bio diversity. The deal was sealed between AFC Managing Director Romani de Silva and Anjali Watson of WWCT at a function at the company’s head office in Colombo.
“When you speak of leopards, everyone thinks of places like Yala or Wilpattu,” reflected Ms Watson. “But no one gives consideration to Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands which is home to a sizable population of the country’s leopards.”
The region abounds with lush tea plantations and local communities that work on those estates. Watson and Kittle’s extensive research there has helped focus attention on a ridge in the Central Highlands where, they say, conservation efforts would not only help protect the leopard population but ensure maintenance of the ecosystem and biodiversity. This ridge is a vital catchment area for the Castlereigh and Moussekele reservoirs.
Findings to date confirm the residence of at least six females and five males with three sets of cubs, with a larger population occupying the forests adjacent to the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary. The proposed ridge corridor, therefore, will act as a vital and additional area for highland leopards.
The overall study area investigated by Watson and Kittle extends from Hapugastenne in the West to Castlereigh in the North, all the way to the inside edge of the Peak Wilderness in the South and to the end of the Boganwantalawa Valley to the East.