dc.description.abstract | Deforestation is one of the major
environmental crisis faced by many nations.
Even so, most of them have successfully face this
challenge by practicing effective forest
conservation policies. Population growth and
the high demand for timber market has
adversely affected the rate of deforestation in Sri
Lanka as well. Before 1970s, natural forests
catered the country’s timber requirement. When
the Government, declared some natural forests
as protected areas, and imposed regulations
that banned harvesting timber from
unprotected natural forests and restrictions on
felling and transport of timber, created an
artificial scarcity of timber in the country. This
led to illegal timber logging and other forest
offences. This research aims to review the laws
relating to illegal timber logging in Sri Lanka, to
analyze the effective implementation of those
policies and to compare Sri Lankan policies with
those in Australian jurisdiction to identify how
they have achieved better conservation of
forests. It further aims to recognize the
loopholes prevailing within the Sri Lankan legal
framework and to provide recommendations as
to how to improve the existing legal regime with
regard to timber logging in Sri Lanka for a
better forest conservation. The research was
conducted using black letter approach using
relevant primary and secondary sources as a
comparative analysis between Sri Lankan and
Australian jurisdictions. The study concludes Sri
Lankan legal system is inadequate to prevent
illegal timber logging and lacks forest policies to
address the issue of deforestation and thereby,
recognizes the importance of adopting from
Australian standards in order to control
deforestation and achieve better forest
conservation in Sri Lanka. | en_US |