Our Staff

It's the responsibility of the 'higher ranking seniors' to educate the new arrivals. Here, Chameera helps Prasanna, Sunil Ratnayake and Sheran (our youngest team member) to prepare monkey identification cards for the season.
Chameera has 5years exprerinence woring with the Toque macaques in over 25 troops. He would know over 1000 individual monkeys by sight.

Staff Members

Sunil Gunatilake,


Our Senior Research Coordinator for the team.


With over 22years of experience is our walking encyclopedia.Born deep south, in Beliatta, Matara Sunil's interests are Archeology and ancient history.

School - Nalanda College, Colombo 10.
Ed - GCE A/L Biology
External Degree in Biology
Projects - Conservation and Biology Course jointly funded by the Smithsonian Institution of the USA and the Macare University of Uganda, 2000 at the Kibale National Park.
- Environmental Journalist Forum (SLEJF) Contributing since DEC05
Projects in Pol Distr - Along with Dr. Jagath Wickaramarathne (Deputy Regional Director of Health for Thamankaduwa)

• Kids in Nature - est in 2006, a teaching program involving many schools in the district, holds workshops at regular intervals in promoting awareness and attitude change towards environment protection and for a garbage free nation.


• Tree planting programs - trees like Weera (dry Petes), Sapindus etc., mainly dry zone trees are planted in these programs and classrooms are allocated trees with the objective of children taking the responsibility to maintain the plant and to observe the growth.

"Over the years I have noticed how things have changed to the worse. it is immensly important to conserve and do all one can to protect our environment."

"Toque moneky's are almost human! They give fabulous insight to our life."




Chameera Jayamal Pathirathne.










Education - Royal Central College, Polonnaruwa.
GCE A/L - Maths
Diploma in Electronics from the German Technical College.

Chameera is our in house Electrician and the man who keeps the camp in running order. He's also the monkey doctor and collects and treats most of the injured toque monkeys, the Gray 'hanuman' langur or the purple faced leaf monkey. Added to this is the stream of other injured animals that get treated at our camp.

Working closely with the Department of Wildlife, Sunil, Chameera and Ruwan have been involved with many projects around the district to remove snares and traps in the sanctuary and releasing many hare and deer from the grasps of the continuously growing poaching population.





Ruwan Sampath Jayawardena

Ruwan Works with the Gray Langurs and has been with us for nearly 3years collecting diet data and working on habitat survey.






Prasanna Jayampathi

• School - Thopaweva MV Polonnaruwa.



• Ed - GCE A/L Accounts (A- Economics/B - Business Studies/ C - Accounts)

A new recruit, Prasanna works with the Gray Langurs. We see Prasanna as an avid bird watcher and keeps tabs of all the animals in the habitat he works at. His data on these collections are of high value and can be used in his dreams of higher studies into the field of Zoology.

Sunil Rathnayake.

Sunil is a student of Nelumwewa MV in Polonnaruwa. our youngest staff member, Sunil is a nature enthusiast and has been an active member of the school Nature Society. Born in 1986, he sat for his GCE A/L examinations in the year 2005 in the Art stream.

Sunil works with the very elusive Purple faced langur. It's quite a feat to get these remarkable primates to adapt to your presence in the field where they peacefully forage for food on the highest canopy layer. Reachable only through thick scrub, Purple faced langurs are shy and are subordinate to the Gray langur and the Toque macaque.