Dr Ranil Senanayake on Analog Forestry | a Chat with Shenelle in Sri Lanka

[Music] what is up guys and welcome back to my channel this is Sri Lanka today's episode is with Dr Ronald senanica a world-renowned systems ecologist who pioneered analog forestry in Sri Lanka and the world over this is the uncut interview from which we created our main Channel video which dives into the bellipolla Arboretum if you are here after watching that video do watch until the end as you will not be disappointed thank you [Music] [Applause] so we are here today with Dr Ronald at his home here in Haldol and was so happy to be here we love seeing your work and I would just like if you can tell us a little bit about yourself and tell the audience a little bit of watches well basically I'm somebody who fell in love with nature as a kid I was remember it was probably I was probably three years old when my mother and father took me out into the mangrove swamps down in calamitya in South and I still remember the diversity in the sky of the birds Chevrons are birds flying at dawn and that is the earliest of my childhood memories and what I've been doing all these years I suppose is responding to that emotion that was created in me right that's amazing here I am since we've been talking a bit come to know that you've done a lot of work we spoke about how it feels like you've lived many different lives because you've you know been a snake collector you've worked at the zoo taking care of animals you know there's a lot of things you've done but if you can just talk about what it is that you are doing here with analog forestry okay at this property well this is two things this property and what you're going to belly polar yes the analog forestry began yes uh if I said this property and do wander around and take a look this is an example I set this up as an example of what any Sri Lankan can do in this nation they can get a piece of abandoned land that is degrading and we are losing the value of this country they can move there and for one-fourth what they struggle to live with in Colombo to buy a piece in the city they can create a place to raise a family in health yes and contribute to the restoration of the nation yes and while doing that make it beautiful yes and have your very own Oasis to live in that's the goal to create an example where other people can say hey this guy did it I can do it that's the whole thing teach by example right all right now Billy puller is another yes thing belly puller began when I was in the ministry and I came back from the States you know I was a systems ecologist I joined the ministry full of fire and wanting to make the changes and I thank him straight on a brick wall what was that the forest Department right they were planting monocultures a eucalyptus and pinus antique and calling it forestry and I said hey wait a minute this is not forestry yeah right this is just plantations and where is the biodiversity where's the rest of the forest yeah ah you don't know anything about it our foreign experts have told us that this is forestry and there they've got the bureaucrats refused to listen and in fact they they were they started opposing me in the ministry right because the last straw was that I found out that the minister was a crook and was trying to make money by giving out land in madurai to Guthrie Corporation and oil palm from Malaysia [Music] irrigated oil palm and Ice refused I said no this is against the interest of the country and our people and of course the response I got from the ministry was oh Daniel you're just a consultant signed that thing this is The Minister's friends I said forget it if this is the way you run a country I am not going to respond in this manner because I remember I just come back from the stage you know thinking Sri Lanka is open and we are honest and we are clean and we are nice it was a horror to discover that we were not yeah we were just a nasty bunch of crooks and I said I'm going to stop it yeah so I've been to the Canadians and I said hey your government has given this money to help the small farmers of Sri Lanka if you allow the government to do this and give it to a multinational corporation yeah I spoke to the first Secretary John Sinclair I said John what will be yours your your situation if it's raised in your country and at that point he said oh shoot and I left it they stopped with the Canadians stopped it the minister was Furious bad mouth mean Parliament said he doesn't know anything he's just got personal degrees he's a useless character I'm sacking him and threw me out yeah and there I was you know and I thought hell okay I've stood my ground for so long and I've been trained in the states so I'm a systems ecologist I better put my money where my mouth is and then what it did was I sold a property I had in Colombo and took the money and then went looking in the mountains here for some degraded land where I could demonstrate how one could really think about building a forest during that time I came across another thing that shocked me and that is really wandering around when I came to the Uber where we live now I looked around and there were no large massive you know trees mango Jack we expect to find from an own village and I couldn't figure out why you know there's all these abandoned open land and no large old trees also and then I saw the standing orders from governor brownrig to Major McDonald the standing order is red this is the Uber Rebellion kill every man over 18 years of age cut down all trees of use to men pull down all houses and burn confiscate All Grain and all cattle what the Army cannot use destroy this was the standing orders given by Brown rig to Major McDonald and They carried it out with the sepoi troops from Colombo and the melee troops of Hamman theater they came and wiped this area out since 1820 so when I saw that I said hell this is the place I'm going to sit down and do it and I found abandoned piece of land um State and I moved there and set about doing what I thought would be the right way to approach Forestry out of that came analog Forestry now belly puller we will go there you will see it's 35 years old the analog forestry is now a globally accepted concept the headquarters now is in Costa Rica the Secretariat right there are 20 countries practicing analog forestry around and I have students coming in from South America from Africa from Asia to this little place in bellipolla to learn analog Forestry but the tragedy is up till today not one person from the wildlife department or the forest department or the agriculture Department as ever visited belly puller to find out what we are doing thus the level of interest from the government bureaucrats what do I do just carry on because my faith is in the public my faith is in us not in the bureaucrats not in the politicians if we don't save ourselves they are never going to no and so when you go to belly puller you will see the example of how we in Sri Lanka as individual people can restore the environment back so that our children will have a better future the thing that I love the most about what you have said so far is um people are hesitant to do anything that is positive or that they know is the right thing to do because they know they're going to be faced with a brick wall like you when it comes to working with the government when it comes to policies and I think that's where a lot of people either that yeah either that there's either the brick wall or there's a bucket of money yes and I think the the in what in your story and I think what always works is that you don't stop there because you if if we sit around and wait for governments to make the change that we want to see in our country it's never going to happen oh and what I always say is that we need to like you said be the change put our money where our mouth is and that's what I love about what you have done it's a it's really important that people take action the way you have because now what you have done has an impact on us and we want to share it with the world and why I hope that once we share it it's going to have an impact on all of you who's watching it and will really make you guys think about what it is the way that we should move forward when it comes to our environment our forests and even like you said how we will live going forward health is the most important thing you said that a parent can give their child and it's very common knowledge that we're all eating non-organic food without even batting an eyelid not even knowing what the consequences of that are for the Next Generation so it's really wonderful what you're doing here and I'm very excited to dive deep and learn more thank you because you know as Mahatma Gandhi said if you want to change anything be the example you want others to follow if not you are kind of being a hypocrite if you yourself cannot make the change you wish to see perhaps even in a government and I always say this like I look at the roads and how people drive in Sri Lanka and I think these are the people that wants want discipline and honesty and law abidingness from a government and we can't expect that because we ourselves do not do it absolutely so I always say and people don't like to hear it we should start with ourselves we should aim to be good citizens we should demand the highest from ourselves and then we will as a collective demand hire and move from our governments hopefully but in the meantime between us people there's lots we can do absolutely you know like I showed you before in that little booklet I showed you we gauge each other or we used to gauge each other through a very simple screen we traditionally used it is called the Dasa Raja Dharma there are 10 attributes to an individual and you look for and if that individual has those attributes hey you can believe him that's a leader you can trust him if they do not have those attributes be aware this is what from Sri Lanka we can offer not only back to our people we can also offer the whole world look at these particular attributes let me read you what these attributes are excuse me excuse me traditionally as Sri Lankans we looked at each other and we gauged each other and we respected each other according to our ability to demonstrate a Fidelity to this dasar Raja Dharma the attributes of an individual who can then create a respect from the community the attributes were Avi Roda which is non-revengefulness there is Kanti patience with others there Isa non-violence we have a coda non-hate tapa restaurant courtesy mother integrity ajeva recognition of talent morality seal and sharing dhana if any individual has these qualities in as their personal qualities as who they are yes they are valuable people that you should always respect and associate with if they do not have these qualities they can be as rich as crisis or they could be as powerful as any politician do not respect them because they are not decent human beings skew a little bit more about analog forestry yes did you discover it yourself how did you come across something like this all right this began actually in the old days when I used to be a snake collector I used to be working with regions Park Zoo whip snake Park Zoo San Diego Zoo Bronx Zoo in New York and zoos around the world used to contact me if they needed a male or a female or something of some rare species and I could go out and I knew how to find them and how to bring them back this is one part of my life of course all this thing came to an end in Guatemala long time ago and when I was I had a I had a contract from San Diego to go and get two male cast-headed lizards for their breeding program this is a beautiful lizard that comes from the mountains of Guatemala and it was up there in the volcano at past El patan I had climbed the mountains I'd found these things and I had these two males and I was coming down the mountain these were times I suppose when the changes in your life happen I was coming off the mountain it was absolutely beautiful it was sunset I was on this volcano and then the thought struck me I really like these creatures you know it's really fond of them studying them working with them and I sadly thought hey what am I doing I'm taking these things that it's really careful away from this beautiful city and they're going to go into a cage yeah in a zoo for the rest of their lives I said yeah so I put them back on a tree and I walked off the mountain and everything I had I handed over I had a snakebuck in gumbaha and all that stuff that's it I'm not putting an animal in a cage finished then a sort of frustration got into me yes that I realized this that was my effort money that was the moment I realized all this year but then I realized also hey I like these creatures so much that in all my travels I was Finding less and less and less of them and then I realized hey I'm seeing less and less of them because there's no space for them to live there's no habitat and that's when I set out to start doing things that created habitat for these creatures to come back and you are like discovery of analog forestry which is kind of like in my understanding please correct me if I'm wrong it's kind of like you're rewinding that piece of land back into what it originally was it's authentic the plants that used to grow there no okay no the thing is I realized that if I want at first I was trying to create habit of how can I create habitat for these creatures and I find that the best habitat possible that I could find in a human setting was in what's called a purana purana ancient Village because there are oval trees there are rattles there are epiphides there's all the stuff in it and I thought oh my gosh okay these purana gamers are growing that they are sort of similar to the forest the analogous to the forest and I thought if I use my scientific knowledge now to create something that is analogous simulate the forest giving all the space for the biodiversity to come back but at the same time giving the owner of the land a possibility of earning something of getting some income then I can have the people who own land to create for us that are analogous to the native Forest that will bring back all this biodiversity and will give them some return yeah and that was the start of creating the analog forestry actually I started creating analog forestry for the birds the bees the frogs the snakes and the lizards not for people yeah it eventually wound up that this was the best design for human beings also right to go ahead and then it's exploded and that's that so what could be the regional impact when you have a like a place like belly puller yeah what is the impact not only there but like in the surrounding does it benefit the surrounding areas and if we were to have more places like belly puller that have these kind of forests like what could be the impact that it would have on the island it could be huge because when I started belly puller and started doing analog forestry and studying the home gardens I realized something else we have this idea of the Canadian forest garden you've heard the story that we had this diverse Forest Gardens true we had diverse Gardens but this diverse forest garden potential was not possible until the British it is a British who did that for us because they brought and created botnik Gardens Gardens and to these botnik Gardens they brought jeans from all over the planet and so if you look today around candy you will see that the biggest diversity of exotic species are just around the garden and is moved from the garden it lessens the gardens then gave the gene stock for the people to build up their forests so belly puller again is similar it is a place where Jean stock is available for the local people once they've seen the trees once they see how they perform oh they like it yeah we have the seeds we have the plants and it spreads out one example of that is one of the plants I brought in here was ice cream beans called Inga it's a tree called Inga ingredients an Inga diversifolia about 10 years ago we introduced it around into the into the communities last year all along the road from haputale going down you had people selling them on the roadside like fruit rambutans people are selling them on the roadside like rambutans Etc yeah last year we estimate that the communities around you they're made close upon 3 million rupees just by having that tree in their Gardens this is how we can help yeah that's amazing this is how we can help and if you think about it even in terms of like of the story you told at the beginning about how this land the order was given to kind of destroy any scorched Earth policy yeah and the reason they choose to do that is to make people dependent on Powers that are uh absolutely and what what to teach them to listen exactly but what you're suggesting with this kind of work that you are doing you're essentially giving the power back to the people you know they're not starving it has to be yeah has to be and even in a you know so we've had a couple of crises in the past four years I would say during the lockdown and even the economic crisis we've seen that the first thing that people find hard to do is when they're a daily wage worker and they can't go out to do make their daily wage yes for like a better ways of pudding there's um it's the food that first goes missing in a household in a in a family life right but when like you said if there's a a Jackfruit tree or something that of sustenance growing which naturally grows all over the island in abundance absolutely we won't have those issues we will be so much more stable in another crisis you know knowing that um people are not starving and we can make decisions in a more thoughtful manner yes we don't have to rush it's a landscape yeah if we change our landscape to support us at the moment the only idea of a landscape that the government has today is how much money can we make of it can we get a foreigner to coming in can they dig it up and can we sell it yeah yeah it's a horrible low way of seeing our nation the government has failed us failed us totally because they do not understand this country they don't understand the ecosystems of this country and they don't understand the history of this country it's tragic but if they are not going to do it we have to do it that is our responsibility by this nation and by each other we are a community we are not just people run by a government and we must grow as a community intelligent into the future let me give you something from the first prime minister of this country ds7 who is sort of saying the father of the nation he said my vision for this nation is a nation of educated gentleman farmers hmm that's how important it is today we are just being reduced to workers in factories and cheap labor all over the world is this development for us I think no so I have to ask you what is the current state of the forest on the island dismal dismal because we do have something in the region of about 15 percent more or less of land in Forest but a majority of that Forest is in the dry zone right and the forest of the mountains and the Wet Zone is probably about three percent to four percent we've lost practically all of it now in a forest there is this incredible amount of biodiversity in the mountains and in the Wet Zone incredible amount of biodiversity that is endemic found only in Sri Lanka and our forests now have been reduced to small patches all over the only way that we can ensure that this biodiversity continues into the future with us is to create habitat which they can occupy again we know that in the lands that we have occupied as human beings we are never going to give it up to having go back into Forest but if we can create analog for us in those lands then we can indeed create space again for the biodiversity that was lost and give the people themselves responsibility and give them an opportunity of creating income for themselves and that I think is a Direction that's useful for us to be looking at so it is possible for analog forestry to take place in a in a area where there are people living as well like it can be it's a that's the whole idea right because you see today land that was Forest whether it be here or South America of Africa wherever once we clear it and we occupy that human beings we will not release it yeah it's private ownership yeah so the if we want the forest to come back we have to convince the owners you are better off creating an analog Forest it gives you more Capital it gives you more income it gives you the possibility of you know securing funds from all over the world etc etc and it gives you a position of Honor in your country thank you so much Dr raniel for your time for sharing so much information with us I really appreciate it because I love learning about this and I hope that we can share this message with all of our audience and that you know it will inspire you guys as well to take action and maybe even consider a different way of life I mean what I'm like to say is thank you it was a real pleasure because you guys what you're doing now and the people we're talking to it's your future if you don't fight for it you're gonna lose it and let me with all my years of experience give you some tools with which to carry on the good fight good luck thank you special thank you to our patrons for your continued support if you'd like to empower us to create more impactful stories like this then consider joining us over at patreon

Channel: This Is Sri Lanka by Sheneller

Views: 10,777

Keywords: dr ranil senanayake, Sheneller, Shenelle Rodrigo, A chat with Shenelle, This is Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka forest, Sri Lanka Forestry, Analog Forestry, Belipola, belipola analog forest

Id: hQGHvSPoxsE

Length: 29min 53sec (1793 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 14 2023