Needles to say forests are home to two-thirds of all terrestrial species.

Without a shadow of doubt this year would be the year for the conservation of fauna and flora. Despite being a tiny nation and an island Sri Lanka is a country rich in biodiversity and is also a biodiversity hotspot as a very crucial role to play. It is common knowledge more research in Sri Lanka would reveal the existence of number of species new to science.

Number of initiatives, were on the pipeline to celebrate the International Year of Biodiversity says Environment and Natural Resources Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka. He said plans were afoot to raise crops in areas that would suit for sudden changes in the climate.

Coming back to biodiversity, a fair portion of Sri Lanka’s scientists, researchers and naturalists had done a great service to take this island nation to propagate biodiversity to the world. The role played by Wildlife Heritage Trust Managing Director well known naturalist Rohan Pethiyagoda and his team to promote biodiversity in Sri Lanka had to appreciated by generations and generations in Sri Lanka.

Many scientists would agree that the word Biodiversity became very familiar with Silva and Perera to the painstaking efforts of Pethiyagoda. The role played by Environment Lawyer Jagath Gunawardena, Researcher Kelum Manamendra-Archachi, Naturalists Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne and Chitralal Jayatileke, Jayantha Jayewardena, Anslem de Silva and Dr. Channa Bambaradeniya cannot be ruled out.

Habitat loss and fragmentation are one of the major causes of animal extinctions. Environmental toxicology and wildlife disease are also likely to impact on Lankan’s amphibian population to a very great extent, according Sri Lanka’s leading herpetologist Anslem de Silva.

Climate change is now also an accepted anthropogenic process and its effect on the ecosystem both locally and globally is only now being gauged.

Critical to achieving advancement of amphibian conservation at a national level is the establishment of three processes: monitoring of amphibian and other biodiversity at sufficient resolution to effectively inform of changes in species and population circumstances, and of management decisions, bio security monitoring and response planning for the presence of invasive organisms such as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and planning management options for potential scenarios as actually and potentially identified through biodiversity and bio security monitoring.

The Global Amphibian Crisis offers Sri Lanka with its technical capability and globally significant fauna the opportunity to become a world leader in tropical biodiversity management through supporting the development and implementation of the proposed monitoring and management focused amphibian conservation framework.

Without the establishment of monitoring procedures and a clear framework for the development and absorption of information into the decision making processes of the Ministry for the Environment and Natural Resources management agencies, Sri Lanka will be helpless in the face of the global amphibian extinction crisis.

Establishment of such a monitoring and planning process will also contribute to the national biodiversity management targets set by the IUCN –World Conservation Union.

Development of this monitoring programme will enable Sri Lanka to be on par with the best resources management nations such as New Zealand and Costa Rica, which earn lavish foreign exchange from their natural resources, as can Sri Lanka if those resources are managed and valued approporiateltly.

Development, Education and Community Engagement

Involvement of students and amateur conservation and environmental groups in national biodiversity monitoring programmes is a feasible and beneficial synergy of interests as monitoring a small proportion of Sri Lankan amphibian diversity at even a small and select number of locations will require significant labour.

Integrating these monitoring programmes with university courses in zoology and environmental management will be a tremendous capacity building and perception changing opportunity.

These initial actions Anslem has proposed for these monitoring and planning methodologies must be presented to the research and conservation management communities in Sri Lanka at the proposed Amphibian Conservation Workshop for consideration and development.

Amphibian Biodiversity and landscape processes: Over recent years robust techniques are available applicable to large-scale monitoring of biodiversity trends. Prominent amongst these is the analysis of patch occupancy by target species. The development of an analysis programme: Presence, allowing for the estimation not only of proportional occupancy of a species over a number of habitat patches within a study site but also the degree of extinction or colonization of those patches over time.

Monitoring design should be informed by a detailed knowledge of amphibian occurrence across Sri Lanka and the niche specificity of those species.

The key to the success of this monitoring programme will be animals be detected passively, that is not captured or displaced during monitoring as this is likely to influence detection probabilities and threaten local population stability.

The nature of occupancy monitoring is such that only presence or absence needs to be recorded, that is once a specimen of a target species is identified within the specified search timeframe the monitoring team can move on to the next site.

Reporting of the findings to management authorities will also be a critical component of the process and ideally management bodies should be central members of the monitoring coordinating body.

Bio security Monitoring: It is envisaged that a synergistic programme may be run alongside the biodiversity monitoring programme to sample populations for the presence of pathogenic organisms. Bio security monitoring be extended to the vicinity of ports, areas where biological materials regularly enter the country and risk centres such as commercial freshwater fish farms.

Conservation Planning: It is prudent that plans are developed for dealing with the potential alerts provided by the monitoring programmes.

Anslem believes that these plans must be developed by the agencies which would be tasked with their enforcement but can also be done so in collaboration with national and international herpetologists and conservation managers who have already developed such procedures.

Sri Lanka possesses a sizable community of herpetologists more than capable of assisting in the delivery of the proposed monitoring and assisting in the development of management plans.

"I am able to offer a presentation of these methods and their utility to adaptive conservation management as proven by my management of critically endangered species recovery programmes and extensive reserve areas," says Anslem.