Conserving sloth bears for future generations

It all began with the Covid pandemic. A time when people’s movements were restricted and when tourism dropped drastically. Jody Miller, a professor at Rutgers University and a wildlife enthusiast had been a resident in Sri Lanka since 1999. Miller had always split her time between Sri Lanka and the US but, was in Sri Lanka when the pandemic began and decided to remain here with her Sri Lankan husband.

Every weekend, she went on walks around Colombo’s wetlands with Janu and Tishuri; the two daughters of the domestic who cleans for them, and had spent a lot of time learning together about birds and the other wildlife that they came across. They were her first inspiration.

A resident in Sri Lanka for 25 years Miller had gone on several safaris to many national parks with her Sri Lankan husband but had not yet spotted a sloth bear. That changed on one trip to Yala in 2021, when she had a very close encounter with a male bear who had many gashes on his head. Her response at the time “I was quite worried for him!”

“Once we left the park, I wanted to understand more about Sri Lanka’s sloth bears and began to do a bit of online research to see what I could find. Dr. Shyamala Ratnayeke’s Sloth Bear: The Barefoot Bare of Sri Lanka had just been published. It wasn’t yet available in Sri Lanka but I was able to purchase an e-book and immediately started reading it. It was so thorough and fascinating,” Miller told Ceylon Today.

“That’s when I had the a-ha moment and began thinking about a children’s book, which could be translated and published in Sinhala and Tamil for children,” she said. She added, “And especially for girls like Janu and Tishuri, (to whom this book is dedicated), who might then learn about not just bears and other wildlife – and the need to protect Sri Lanka’s biodiversity and endemic/endangered species – but, also about what women conservation biologists can accomplish and maybe even envision such career paths for themselves.”

Sloth bears
“Ratnayeke was the first researcher to study Sri Lankan Sloth Bears in the wild. I reached out to her to pitch the idea. We had never met before and at the time she was a professor at Sunway University in Malaysia. Luckily for me, she was intrigued by my idea and willing to support it by reading drafts and reviewing Narada Ranatunga’s illustrations for scientific accuracy. Like me, she was adamant that the book must be available in Sinhala and Tamil,” Miller explained.

Miller and Ratnayeke wanted the book to be used for conservation education programming, and Ratnayeke suggested that a list of DO’s and DON’T’s for children in areas with sloth bears, to improve human-bear coexistence should be included.

“I identified several organisations doing great conservation education work, including the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society (WNPS) Youth Wing and the Federation of Environmental Organisations, (FEO) which have programmes in Wasgamuwa, where Ratnayeke’s work took place. This was, for us, a very “full circle” discovery! My friend Dr. Carmen Wickramagamage of the University of Peradeniya located translators and supervised the translations. The Sinhala translation was completed by a temporary lecturer at the Department of Sinhala of the University of Peradeniya, Nayomi Madhupani Konara, before moving to the UK for postgraduate studies. The Tamil translation was completed by Senior Lecturer Department of Languages, Sabaragamuwa University, Lareena Abdul Haq,” Miller explained.

First children’s book
Shyamala and the Sloth Bears is pitched for children starting around age eight she added and it is written in such a way that it can also be read aloud to younger children, and the information is sufficiently detailed and engaging, that children and adults can learn new information about Sri Lankan Sloth Bears, their ecological roles, and why it’s so important to protect them.

“This is my first children’s book. I’m an academic, so I’ve been writing books and articles for the past 30 years, but all for adult and specifically academic audiences. So, this is clearly a new foray for me. I’ve since seen Sri Lankan Sloth Bears a few times, again at Yala as well as Wilpattu. But, mostly I’ve learned about them through Shyamala’s amazing work. I have visited nearly all of Sri Lanka’s national parks, nevertheless sloth bears are so few in number and are largely nocturnal, so they aren’t easy to see,” Miller explained.

A special message from the author : “The goals are threefold: I wanted to produce a children’s picture book of international quality available in Sinhala and Tamil; English-speaking children here have so many options at their fingertips, but these offerings are more limited for non-English speaking and especially rural children.”

Ranatunga’s work on the illustrations is what helped Miller accomplish this very much, by bringing the story of the sloth bear to life. Second, as noted, she wants young people to learn about the importance of sloth bears, how and why they are endangered and at risk for extinction, and what we will lose if we lose them.

Conservation message
“The book has a conservation message, teaching readers about sloth bears’ ecological functions and how protecting them can also protect many other of Sri Lanka’s endemic species. Finally, it was especially important to me that the story included a focus on Shyamala’s inspiration and work as well. I want to inspire children, especially girls, to envision career paths for themselves that they might otherwise not be aware of or think of women traditionally doing,” Miller said.

She is very much committed to conservation education in Sri Lanka and to make this “fit” the expectations of her academic career, she has developed and begun teaching a course, entitled “Conservation, Crime and Environmental Justice,” which allows her to draw connections between her academic field and her work in Sri Lanka.

“Shyamala and the Sloth Bears is the first of what I plan to be a multi-year series, with thanks to Dilmah Conservation for having published the first book in the series. I’m very excited to continue to provide engaging and educational children’s books in Sri Lanka to promote wildlife conservation. I purchased the vast majority of the books printed by Dilmah (750 Sinhala and 750 Tamil books), in order to donate them for conservation education programmes, especially for children living in sloth bear territories,” Miller explained.

Dilmah Conservation was formed by late Dilmah Founder Merrill J Fernando in 2007, to fulfil his pledge of kindness to nature. Dilmah Conservation operates alongside Dilmah’s Merrill J Foundation focusing on green restoration, climate change research, sustainable agriculture, biodiversity conservation and environmental education.

Read the article by Risidra Mendis on the Ceylon Today: https://ceylontoday.lk/2024/11/30/conserving-sloth-bears-for-future-generations/