Wilpattu National park is the one of the oldest and largest national parks in Sri Lanka. Wilpattu National Park name made due to natural lakes (Willu-pattu, “Land of Lakes”) inside the park. The “Willus” (natural lakes consist with depressions or sand rimmed water basins which full with rainy water) brings unique feature to park.

There are about 106 lakes (Willu) and natural tanks are found throughout park. Wilpattu National Park is located approximately about 180km from Colombo and 30km west Anuradhapura and 26km north of Puttalam. The park is spread about 131,693 Hectares.

Wilpattu is most famous of witness the beauty of Leopards in Sri Lanka, there were found that about 50 leopards are living in Wilpattu through the survey conducted at 2015. Many types of vegetation are found in Wilpattu National Park, which is including littoral vegetation (Salt grass) and low scrub monsoon forest with tall emergent, such as palu, satin, milla, weera, ebony and wewarna

Climate

Annual Rainfall – 1,000 mm (39 in)

Annual temperature is about 27.2 °C (81.0 °F).

Main sources of rainfall – Inter-monsoonal rains (March) and northeast monsoon (December – February)

Popular Visiting Period

Popular visiting period is between the February and October

Animals in Wilpattu

There is different type of Animals living inside the Wilpattu, there were found that about 31 mammals are living within park, such as Elephant, Leopard, Sloth Bear, Spotted Deer and Water Buffalo.

Also there is many number of birds are living inside the park such as Sri Lankan Junglefowl, the open bill, Little cormorant, The Painted Stork, Kites buzzards, Eagles, Owls, gulls and terns can be found found at Wilpattu National Park. Further Wetland birds such as whistling teal, Black headed ibis, garganey, spoonbill, pintail, purple heron, Large white egret, cattle egret can be found in Wilpattu.

Also many variety of Reptiles can be seen in Wilpattu such as mugger crocodile, cobra, monitor lizard, rat snake, pond turtle, Indian python and soft shelled turtle