Historical accounts suggest that more than 75% of Sri Lanka was once covered by forest. But since the British colonial era, there has been mass scale clearing of forests largely for agricultural expansion. Infrastructure development, destructive logging and encroachment even of protected areas continue to fuel deforestation, resulting in a shocking reduction of Sri Lanka’s closed canopy of forest cover to 22% of the country’s total land area in 1999.

In his growing up years, young Duleep De Chickera’s ambition was either to follow in the footsteps of his father and become a lawyer or join the army like many of his schoolmates. But all that changed when he sensed God’s calling to him to be a priest.