Abstract:
Yala national park is key hub of the tourism industry in Sri Lanka. But in recent years,
the Yala national park occurs conservation conflict in between park management and
other stakeholders. Therefore, the park management will not be able to achieve the
conservation objective within this context. The study mainly focused about the
conservation conflict issues and challengers and strategies to the park management to
minimize these issues. The respondent represented from the wildlife conservation
department and local community. They are former director general, assistant director,
park warden, hoteliers, tour operators, politicians, safari jeep operators and visitors. The
data collected from 11 respondents under the snowball sampling as a single case study
and inductive approach. The data collected through semi-structured telephone
interview. The study researcher revealed that conservation conflict issues as safari jeep
drives drive in high speed, accident the wild animals, horn and yell the animals, violate
the park rules and regulation. Because of this reason, park management have to face the
challengers in minimizing this issue. The study revealed that political pressure, poverty,
lack of institutional capacity, lack of financial resources were major challengers of park
management. Park management could be introduced strategies as cancelling the licence
from the safari jeep operators, giving the awareness programme to safari jeep operators
regarding the wildlife conservation, giving leaflets to the visitors in mentioning about
endanger species as well government could be target the real wildlife tourists.
