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Areas that had natural protection in the form of sand dunes and mangroves escaped the worst of the tsunami. Dilshath Banu writes
Saved by the sand
The sea breeze touches you even though you are some distance from the shore. Surrounding the area is lush forest. This is the Bundala National Park, which was declared the first Ramsar site in Sri Lanka.

Amidst the greenery, lagoons, salterns, estuaries and mangrove swamps is Indrani's Grocery Shop just large enough to hold two people. The shop is filled with many items like seeni bole, which you may have enjoyed more than ten years ago, sandwiched between newer goods.

"We bring our goods from the town or from Hambantota. There's not much business these days. Lots of people take loans from our shop, but somehow I earn about Rs. 400-500 per day. Many people still come to this shop, although we have two more shops in Bundala village," said Indrani, handing a packet of meatballs to an old man.

The Bundala village was established more than a century ago by the British, with many Englishmen using it as a convenient stop before travelling to Yala the next day.

Now 350 families inhabit this village. Most are engaged in fisheries, while others work in salterns and paddy farming. The tsunami has hit this area as well, but Bundala village proper was protected by the sand dunes along the coast, although the village is situated below sea level.

Oruwella was once a rich fisheries harbour and also the site of intense coral mining. The tsunami turned Oruwella into a desert, most of it covered by fast moving sand. Dayananda, who came back to Oruwella from a nearby refugee camp said that he used to see three tractors full of coral being transported every day. Dayananda also recalled that in some villages, people used to build their houses using coral instead of brick.

Sand dunes and coral reefs are an integral part of the wetlands ecosystem that plays a defensive role in the face of a catastrophe like the tsunami. Bundala village and Oruwella are two examples of how wetlands minimized the impact of the tsunami and how the tsunami won when the wetlands were destroyed.

The Ramsar Convention defines wetlands as areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing.

There are two kinds of wetlands- natural and man-made. Natural wetlands include salt water wetlands, which consist of lagoons, estuaries, mangroves, sea grass and coral reefs. The other is the inland fresh water wetlands such as rivers, streams, marshes, swamp forest and villus. Tanks, reservoirs, rice fields and salterns can be taken as man-made wetlands.

"Sand dunes are in fact, a terrestrial system. But they are associated with coastal wetlands, because most are bounded by sand dunes. We saw how the sand dune acted as a buffer for the Bundala village," said M. Sandun J. Perera, Assistant Programme Officer, Ecosystem and Livelihoods Group in The World Conservation Union(IUCN). "On the other hand, the Kalametiya fisheries harbour which was constructed using the sand dune was completely destroyed by the tsunami. People had cultivated coconut plantations and home gardens on that particular sand dune as well.

Wetlands in Sri Lanka are threatened by various forms of human activity. In the Kapuhenwala estuary, the mangroves were thin due to human intrusion, and all of them were destroyed. One of the main entry points for the tsunami waves penetrating inland was the estuary or lagoon mouths. However, Mr. Perera says that when the tsunami water was funnelled into a lagoon, it would absorb the water and prevent flooding. But if it is a river estuary, there is a possibility of flooding unless there are swamp areas to absorb the water.

"If you take the salterns for instance, Maha Lewaya in Hambantota, people created artificial canals to drain the water to the sea. It is through this outlet that the tsunami water funnelled in and destroyed everything. And there were no mangroves associated with these man-made outlets to minimize the destruction," said Mr. Perera.

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