National Parks and Nature Reserves

Sri Lanka may be small of an island, but the rich biodiversity would do justice to a country many times its size.

Boasting an impressive array of national parks, big herds of elephants, elusive leopards, hundreds of colourful birds, reefs teeming with rainbow-coloured fish as well as great locations for whale and dolphin watching, Sri Lanka is is one of the finest wildlife destinations in South Asia.

Sri Lanka has one of the highest rates of biological endemism (16% of the fauna and 23% of flowering plants are endemic) in the world. The island’s isolation from the mainland, the heavy rainfall of the two diagonally blowing monsoons, and the country’s wide range of altitudes have given Sri Lanka a variation in climate and biodiversity normally found only across an entire continent.