Sri Lanka opens wildlife airport

MATTALA, SRI LANKA, 7 March 2013: Sri Lanka is set to open a Chinese-built international airport, 18 March, surrounded by wildlife sanctuaries and with the aim of boosting tourism, an official said.

Authorities want to leverage the exotic flora and fauna in the US$209-million airport’s neighbourhood to attract holidaymakers.

Travellers will be offered the “experience of being able to get up close and feed wild baby elephants,” the state-run airport chairman Prasanna Wickremasuriya said.

The nearby Udawalawe wildlife sanctuary where authorities maintain a transit home for orphaned baby elephants is already a popular attraction for tourists who pay a fee to feed bottle milk to baby elephants.

Wickremasuriya told reporters another US$100 million would be spent to increase the aircraft parking bay to 14 from the current 10.

China’s Export Import bank funded the project and provided expertise as in the case of a US$1.5-billion sea port opened for commercial shipping last year.

Both the port and the airport are in Hambantota district, the constituency of President Mahinda Rajapakse, who has pledged to turn the region into a new commercial capital of the nation of 20 million people.

New Delhi government officials have expressed fears that Hambantota is part of a Chinese policy to throw a “string of pearls” — or a circle of influence — around South Asia’s nuclear-armed regional power India.

However, Sri Lanka insists its interests are purely commercial and it will not allow any foreign power to get a foothold in its ports and airports.

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