Udawalawe National park

The Udawalawe National Park situated in the dry zone of the country and belonging to Sabaragamuwa & Uva provinces. The park area is 30,821 ha. The park was established in 1972.
The park lies within dry zone and small segment lies within intermediate zone. The long dry season is characteristic feature. Main source of rainfall is southwest monsoon (May - September) and mean annual rainfall is about 1520mm. the mean annual temperature is around 29C.
Park consists of dry lowland forest, riverine forest, thorny scrublands and grasslands. One special attraction of the park is the Udawalawe reservoir and the Walawe River which flows through the park. Udawalawe National Park is world famous for its large elephant populations. In this park one can observe elephants at any given time of the day. Other than Elephants water buffalo, spotted & barking deer, wild boar, sambhur, jackal & ruddy, grey & striped necked mongoose are also found in this park. Though the leopard, jungle & fishing cats have recorded in the park sightings are very rare.
Elephant Transit Home at Udawalawe National park is a centre for Rehabilitation and Re-integration of orphaned wild elephants has been established at Udawalawe National Park by the deapartment of Wildlife Conservation. Increase of the country's population, large scale irrigation and agricultural projects have fragmented the former habitat of elephants resulting elephant mortality and decrease of population. Despite the mitigation measures to control human elephant conflict considerable numbers of elephant calves were recovered as orphans. The DWLC pioneered a research project in 1995 at Udawalawe to rehabilitate and supplement wild elephant orphans back to wild. It has been succesfully caried out with four releases in 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004, 2007, 2008. Visitors could enjoy the antics of these babies from a viewing platform at the Centre.