Please email your inquiry to : kithsiri@wilpattu.com

Author

Kithsiri Gunawardena, the author of this web site is an Attorney-at-Law holding a key management position in the LOLC Group of companies, a leading conglomerate in the country.

Most of his free time is spent pursuing his lifelong passion of studying and documenting the rich biodiversity of the island. His desire to identify the species, study behaviour and keep accurate records, from a very young age, resulted in him travelling to all parts of the country and keeping notes of the animals and plants observed in the field. This passion also resulted in him gradually acquiring the necessary literature/field guides on the subject from insects to mammals and wild flowers to trees. He took to wildlife photography after almost two decades of serious field studies, initially, to help with the identification of small Lycaenidae butterflies. He finds photography to be an important means to further expand his knowledge on areas such as identification of animal species with subtle morphological differences, identifying individual animals, determining races, plumage patterns, colour forms, morphs, age, sex etc. as well as identifying wild flowers, wild orchids, trees and shrubs.

The author has written many articles to local and international journals on research work conducted by him on the avifauna of the country including a pioneering study on the nesting of Black Eagles Ictinaetus malayensis as well as a booklet on the endemic birds of Sri Lanka for the benefit of Advanced Level students, which was distributed free to all the Sinhala medium schools in the country. He has delivered many lectures on the diversity of wildlife in the country, identification of venomous snakes, identification of birds, butterflies etc. to Governmental and Non Governmental organizations including the veterinary science faculty of the University of Peradeniya. He is a member of the expert panel for birds of the National Red List 2012 of Sri Lanka published by the biodiversity secretariat of the Ministry of Environment and holds a certificate on wildlife management from the Open University of Sri Lanka.

The author is also the Joint Secretary of the Ceylon Bird Club as well as the Joint Editor of its monthly journal, the Ceylon Bird Club Notes. www.ceylonbirdclub.org

In May 2009, with peace returning to the country the author started to regularly visit the Wilpattu National Park, which was not accessible for almost 3 decades. Even though he had visited many parks in the country, he was captivated by the beauty and diversity of Wilpattu. Since then he has been visiting the park regularly and started to document the many species of fauna and flora that are found in the park from 2011.

During one of these trips to Wilpattu, Mr. Nanda Senanayake, who is one of the most knowledgeable people in the country on Leopards, instilled an interest in the author to identify individual leopards in the park by the careful study of their spot/rosette patterns. The author having examined the available literature on this subject found that such an exercise would indeed be a fascinating challenge and if conducted over a long period of time, would enable him to better understand the behavior of this great feline.

The author visits the park as often as he can and continues this study purely out of personal interest and will update this website with information and photographs of individual leopards as well as other species. His primary purpose of launching this website is to share this information with people who may be interested in the Sri Lankan leopard as well as the flora & fauna of Wilpattu National Park.

Acknowledgements

The guidance and support given to the author by Dr. Suranjan Fernando and Dr. Jacob De Vlas with regard to the identification of trees, shrubs, plants and wild flowers photographed by him at Wilpattu National Park is greatly appreciated.

The author is extremely thankful to Mr. Uditha Hettige and Mr. Mendis Wickramasinghe for providing their expert knowledge on Herpetology and helping the author with the identification of  a number of amphibian species depicted on this site.

The author is grateful to Mrs. Tara Wikramanayake for proof reading the pages on this site.

He acknowledges with gratitude the support and encouragement given by his father Solomon Gunawardena and mother Padmini Gunawardena for him to study wildlife in the country as a hobby from a very young age.

Last but not least the author wishes to thank his wife, Dilki Gunawardena, for being his best friend and a great source of strength to him in life. He is also grateful to her  for the support and encouragement given to conduct this study and develop this web site.

Anyone who may be interested in using the information or the photographs contained in this website for any educational purpose or commercial purpose is kindly requested to contact the author and obtain his consent prior to doing so.