Rohan Pethiyagoda – The call of the cloud forest

Restoring the dwindling biodiversity of the unique montane cloud forests of Sri Lanka through the Agrapatana Montane Forest Restoration Initiative earned conservationist Rohan Pethiyagoda a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2000. Since then, he has worked with his fellow citizens to regenerate realms of degraded farmland, tea and rubber plantations and forests in this mist-shrouded region located close to the world-famous Horton Plains National Park. Today, the journey to ecosystem renewal is taking hold, with the native forest starting to recolonize and dozens of long-absent and new species appearing.