Recent Trends in the Forestry Sector of Sri Lanka

Abstract

The forest cover in Sri Lanka has been continuously declining during the last several decades. The forest cover which was around 44% of the land area in 1956 had declined to 23.9% in 1992 and 22% at present. It has been widely accepted that this rate of deforestation has caused one of the main environmental and social problems in the country. Although, successive governments have taken many steps to conserve forests and to introduce laws and regulations to control deforestation, the problem was aggravating from year to year without effective solutions, mainly due to the conflicting demands placed on forest resources.