The Sinharaja rain forest is a tropical rain forest found in Sri Lanka. It is also known as a primary rain forest, wet evergreen forest as well as a virgin rain forest.
It spreads over three districts, Matara, Galle and Ratnapura. It was named as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1988. It has a high bio-diversity so it is considered as one of the bio diversity hot spots in the world. There are a lot of endemic animal and plant species in the Sinharaja Forest.
Beraliya, batu na, diya na and hora are a few examples of the endemic plant species. The purple faced leaf monkey, jungle fowl , Sri Lanka blue magpie and the green pit viper are some of our endemic bird and animal species which live in the jungle.
It has dense vegetation and the trees are arranged in different layers named canopy, sub-canopy, understorey,ground herbs and shrubs.
It gets much rainfall and there is a warm environment inside the forest. The forest is a good habitat for various organisms which help to maintain the water cycle, balance the oxygen and carbon dioxide gases in the atmosphere.
We should protect the Sinharaja forest for our future generations.
Pavanya Vinudinie Samaranayake
10 years
6 A
Musaeus College
Colombo