An international icon in wildlife and environmental conservation, Bala Amarasekaran is a Sri Lankan who moved to Sierra Leone as a 16-year-old teenager.
He is well known around the world as a leading conservationist who has dedicated himself to rescuing and protecting chimpanzees.
He is the founder and director of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Sierra Leone.
Under his leadership, Tacugama has grown into a diverse organization actively engaged in community outreach, wildlife field research, environmental sustainability, conservation education, and alternative livelihoods programs.
Now, this renowned Sri Lankan is returning after 46 years.
Raised and educated in Jaffa, he moved to Sierra Leone with his parents in 1970.
He completed his education there and became an accountant.
Then, he married a girl from another Jaffna family, Sharmila.
During a trip after their wedding, they come across a chimpanzee baby tied to a tree in a remote village.
It changes not only his life story but also the story of Sierra Leone.
The mother of this chimpanzee baby was killed and sold for meat, and this baby was about to be sold, too.
The belief that chimpanzee meat provides nutrition to pregnant mothers and economic needs are the reasons for the destruction of this wildlife.
Amarasekaran, who bought this baby for 20 US dollars, brings the baby home and raises it as a baby with great expectations. He names him Bruno.
That is the beginning of a big story that will change history.
Later, Bala, sensitive to the damage to chimpanzees in Sierra Leone, saves seven more chimpanzee babies.
In the meantime, he educates the government and various parties about the destruction of chimpanzees and advocates for their conservation.
The Sierra Leonean government, which was sensitive about this, gave him forty acres of forest land near the city, and an international non-governmental organization supported it as one condition.
They asked Bala to become its program director.
Accordingly, the accountant Bala started his journey to becoming an environmental conservationist.
That was the birth of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, which was exactly 30 years ago.
It got its name from a fish species called Takuyama in a reservoir in that area.
Bala has received much praise from the government of Sierra Leone and internationally.
When many people, even Sierra Leoneans, left their country during the civil war, the Ebola epidemic, and the Covid pandemic, he sent his wife and children to London when the situation was worst and stayed there to protect the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary for his environmental campaign.
With that type of dedication, Bala Amarasekaran built up not only a Chimpanzee Sanctuary but also a global awareness to protect endangered wildlife.
Hence, he has inevitably become an international symbol of coexistence, too.
(With inputs from BBC and a Facebook post by Dr. Dilanthe Withanage)
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