Chinthaka Weerasinghe
Operations Manager
Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society
March 2017
On Friday, March 17th a group of students from the Department of Zoology of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka with their senior lecturer, Dr. Sampath Seneviratne visited the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society project site in Wasgamuwa. The group came to participate in a 3 day field training program. The group consisted of 13 students specializing in ornithology and environmental management.
The entire group stayed at the Field House and participated in several of the field research activities of the SLWCS. For the first time they got the opportunity to work with remote cameras* especially how to use remote camera traps to collect information on birds. They also spent an exciting night in the SLWCS tree huts to collect information on nocturnal animals. In addition mist netting was conducted to demonstrate to the students the safe capture of wild birds for identification purposes, to gather biometrics, collect blood samples for genetic analysis and for bird ringing. They also recorded bird songs for playback to entice birds to fly into the traps.
Over the past 21 years the SLWCS has hosted many such international and national student groups. This is in keeping with the Society’s mandate to encourage, foster and inculcate a passion for field research and applied conservation in students for the conservation of wildlife and their habitats.
