In Sri Lanka, there is a new threat to wild animals: mobile phones. Also, in the country’s main wildlife park, it is now banned to prevent tourists by car from communicating the good sites and getting there, to open grave.
In recent months, rangers in Yala National Park,home to the world’s largest population of leopards and also a large number of elephants and bears, have found the bodies of several animals, overturned by cars. “When a leopard or other interesting animal is spotted by a car, the news is quickly transmitted by mobile phone, which has the effect of attracting a large number of vehicles to the indicated site,” the Department of Wildlife Conservation said in a statement announcing the ban.
And for further precautions, the national telecommunications regulator will cut off all access to the network in the park during peak traffic, the statement added. Yala Park, which covers an area of 985 km2 in the southeast, attracts more than 100,000 foreign tourists each year, and is an important source of income for Sri Lanka, the first South Asian country to introduce mobile phones, in 1989. It now has some 22.12 million for a population of 21 million.
