{"id":132836,"date":"2024-03-29T16:32:45","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T16:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/?p=132836"},"modified":"2024-03-29T16:35:49","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T16:35:49","slug":"thilo-hoffmannthe-saviour-of-sinharaja","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/websitedesigns.com.au\/elankanew\/thilo-hoffmannthe-saviour-of-sinharaja\/","title":{"rendered":"Thilo Hoffmann:The Saviour of Sinharaja"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thilo Hoffmann:The Saviour of Sinharaja<\/span><\/h2>\n

Source:<\/span><\/strong>Sundaytimes<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"elanka\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Informed environmental activism in Sri Lanka owes its beginnings largely to Thilo Hoffmannm, a Swiss national, who made our country his home 69 years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

His leadership of the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society and the Ceylon Bird Club proved invaluable in launching a crusade that not only saved Sinharaja but also substantially expanded the island\u2019s protected-areas network, opening a new era of civil-society engagement in the management of Sri Lanka\u2019s biodiversity heritage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Invited by his literary agent to recount his life, P. G. Wodehouse was at a loss. \u201cI wrote a book\u201d, he said at length. \u201cThen another\u2026 And then another. Just writing one book after another, that\u2019s my life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Asked to relate his own life story, Thilo Walter Hoffmann (1922-2014) might have responded just as glibly: \u201cI saved a forest. Then another. And then another. And so on.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t as easy as that. Ever since making Ceylon his home almost 70 years ago,Thilo Hoffmann entertained for this island sentiments far warmer and deeper than those of ordinary affection, working tirelessly to preserve its natural riches and pass these intact to generations yet to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

Apart from being a pioneer of the nation\u2019s nature-conservation establishment, Hoffmann demonstrated for the first time how persistent, focused, civil-society activism could make even the most obstinate of governments change its mind.And by so doing he saved large tracts of the island\u2019s natural landscape from irreparable damage and plunder.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Switzerland to Ceylon<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Having obtained his Master\u2019s degree in Agricultural Science from ETH Z\u00fcrich (coincidentally also the university from which Albert Einstein graduated), Hoffmann came to Sri Lanka in 1946 to work for A. Baur & Co.<\/span><\/p>\n

His fianc\u00e9e Mae joined him shortly afterwards, marrying him the following year. The couple were not slow to make Sri Lanka their home. They travelled the length and breadth of the island in their MG TC sports car, marking off their routes on a map so as to be sure they saw everything.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoffmann was indefatigable, climbing all the island\u2019s principal peaks: Adam\u2019s Peak four times, last when he was 78! And they did it the hard way, much of it on foot, camping, with Hoffmann contracting hepatitis once and malaria three times, not to mention enduring as many courses of anti-rabies injections as a result of dog bites.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Ranasinghe\u2019s beautifully-scripted biography makes clear, Hoffmann didn\u2019t set out to be a conservationist. The thing grew on him. Less than a year into his stay in Ceylon he had his epiphany when accompanying some friends on a hunting expedition to Okanda.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur party shot a leopard and other animals, with permits, including hare and jungle fowl for the pot\u201d, he wrote. \u201cOne day, armed with rifles three of us were sitting on the bund\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

Three wild boars came trotting towards us. We decided that each of us take one. We counted one, two, three and three shots went off more or less together. Only one boar was hit.<\/span><\/p>\n

It fell and was screaming. The other two ran off instinctively. Then they came back to their fallen companion and tried to raise the wounded animal on its legs. But its spine was broken above the shoulder.<\/span><\/p>\n

The return despite the danger was like a very human reaction. Because of it the two also met with their deaths. It made an impression on me and from then on I never shot another animal.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Having joined the Wildlife Protection Society in the early 1950s he served on its committee from 1961-79, lastly as President for a record 11 years.<\/span><\/p>\n

He left it with a membership of 5,000 and as \u201ca force to be reckoned with\u201d, not least through the dozens of nature clubs the Society had established in schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was Hoffmann too, who recognised the need to deliver the conservation message in the vernacular, launching the Sinhala journal \u2018Warana\u2019, now in its 38th year, for much of that time edited by Douglas Ranasinghe, now his biographer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Advocacy<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Hoffmann was an outspoken advocate for national reserves, pointing to their recreational, scientific, cultural and economic value.<\/span><\/p>\n

He successfully lobbied for the expansion of Sri Lanka\u2019s protected areas network, adding several key parks to the inventory and expanding others, most notably Wilpattu.<\/span><\/p>\n

His signature achievement, however, was mobilising public opinion against the 1970-77 Bandaranaike Government\u2019s plan to harvest the Sinharaja forest to feed a plywood factory at Kosgama, constructed using Canadian aid.<\/span><\/p>\n

The project was finally abandoned in 1978, but only after a considerable area of the forest had been decimated.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among his few failures was an attempt to make the Peak Wilderness Sanctuary a national park, a dream fulfilled in part by the Central Highlands World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO in 2010.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1986 Hoffmann \u2018supped with the enemy\u2019 by accepting a position as Honorary Project Manager of the controversial Mahaweli Environment Project, through which he oversaw the declaration of several new national parks, including Maduru Oya, Wasgomuwa, Flood Plains and Somawathiya, increasing the national protected-areas estate by some 150,000 hectares, an extent 1\u00bd times that of Yala.<\/span><\/p>\n

At least part of his success as a conservation advocate stemmed from being moderate, if persistent. As Ranasinghe observes: \u201cHoffmann never took up extremist positions, always keeping a balanced mind and advocating reasonable and realistic solutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

He could readily see and understand contrary viewpoints as well as external constraints\u2026 In this he is notably different from present day \u2018super-activists\u2019 and \u2018greens\u2019.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hoffmann was prescient in foreseeing the tension between overpopulation and nature conservation, the consequences of which we see so clearly today.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the most pertinent questions has been neither posed nor answered\u201d, he wrote in 1972. \u201cWhat will happen to our national parks and reserves in the years to come when the population will double again in less than a quarter of a century, when within one generation there will not be twelve but twenty-five million people in this island?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Birdwatching with tigers<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ornithology remained close to Hoffmann\u2019s heart all his life, during which he remained a pillar of the Ceylon Bird Club. At great risk to himself he persisted with bird censuses in the north well into the LTTE era. Ranasinghe recounts a trip Hoffmann made to Jaffna in May 1990.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen night began to fall [Hoffman and his driver, Silva] had just crossed Elephant Pass into the peninsula. They noticed a brand-new Mitsubishi Pajero jeep following them at high speed. Near Pallai they were overtaken and ordered to stop. Fortunately, Silva spoke Tamil.<\/span><\/p>\n

After some questions and answers, with the boss of the jeep never seen, the go-between ordered all three of them to get down. They were dumped on the roadside, with their baggage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then both vehicles drove off.\u201d Hoffmann and Silva were given shelter by an elderly Tamil couple. Next day they made their way to the Tigers\u2019 headquarters at Kondavil, where they met Anton Balasingham.<\/span><\/p>\n

They were detained there for two nights, after which his car was returned to him and they were allowed to leave.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ranasinghe paints a beautiful, moving and deftly-crafted portrait of Hoffmann. Personally I find it astonishing that Sirimavo Bandaranaike didn\u2019t deport him when he was fomenting public opinion against her during the Sinharaja controversy of 1972-77, an era in which several foreigners were booted out for far less.<\/span><\/p>\n

It speaks volumes for Hoffmann\u2019s diplomacy that he endured even the most intolerant and xenophobic of governments despite often coming into conflict with them and, as the years wore on, accumulating a formidable body of envious rivals who would gladly have seen the back of him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tribute<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Through painstaking research enriched by decades-long familiarity with his subject, Douglas Ranasinghe has written an enduring and well-researched tribute to his friend and mentor.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a book of its formidable size the text is not only lucid but also remarkably free of the typos and careless errors that usually bedevil such works. The 135 pages of appendices are especially valuable, being mostly excerpts from Hoffmann\u2019s writings that are not generally accessible online.<\/span><\/p>\n

What is more, Ranasinghe\u2019s unpretentious prose makes for easy and enjoyable reading. I picked the book up hoping to gloss through a chapter but soon found I couldn\u2019t put it down. Six straight hours later I found I had arrived at a paragraph that read: \u201cEND\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

The text is sprinkled with arcane and fascinating trivia that are a delight to discover. For example, that the Ceylinco building in Colombo\u2019s Fort was accidentally built back-to-front (it is equally ugly from the rear: I checked). Or that James Ramsbotham, the 2nd Viscount Soulbury, lived continuously in Jaffna as a Hindu yogi, under the name Santhaswami, from the 1950s until his death in 2004.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I neared the end of Ranasinghe\u2019s account of Hoffmann\u2019s love affair with his adopted country it became increasingly clear to me that his book is not just a biography of his hero but a history of the Sri Lankan conservation movement in the second half of the 20th century.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two things are synonymous. Hoffman may well have seen this country through a foreigner\u2019s eyes; but despite living here on an annually-renewed residence visa for more than six decades, he was a truer son of Sri Lanka\u2019s soil than most of us natives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Click here to receive your free copy of the eLanka Newsletter twice a week delivered directly\u00a0to\u00a0your\u00a0inbox!<\/span><\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thilo Hoffmann:The Saviour of Sinharaja Source:Sundaytimes Informed environmental activism in Sri Lanka owes its beginnings largely to Thilo Hoffmannm, a Swiss national, who made our country his home 69 years ago. His leadership of the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society and the Ceylon Bird Club proved invaluable in launching a crusade that not only saved […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":132837,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62974,62975],"class_list":{"0":"post-132836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-aside","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-articles","8":"tag-the-saviour-of-sinharaja","9":"tag-thilo-hoffmannm","10":"post_format-post-format-aside"},"yoast_head":"\nThilo Hoffmann:The Saviour of Sinharaja<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Informed environmental activism in Sri Lanka owes its beginnings largely to Thilo Hoffmannm, a Swiss national, who made\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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