Three Terms That Need Sorting Out
The tourism industry has a language problem. Three terms get used interchangeably, and they should not be, because they mean very different things.
Ecotourism means tourism that involves visiting natural areas with the intention of learning about the environment. It is nature-based and education-focused. A guided birdwatching walk is ecotourism. A national park safari is ecotourism. The bar is low.
Sustainable tourism means tourism that tries to minimise its negative impact. It aims to leave things as they are. Reduce waste. Use less water. Offset carbon. The goal is to do no harm, or at least less harm than conventional tourism.
Regenerative tourism goes further. It does not just reduce harm. It actively improves the place it operates in. The community should be better off because of the tourism, not in spite of it. The environment should be healthier. The culture should be stronger. When the tourism stops, the place should be in a better state than when it started.
Camp Leopard aspires to be regenerative. We do not always succeed. But here is what we are doing and why.
Economic Regeneration
The most direct way tourism can regenerate a community is by keeping money local. Not theoretically local. Actually local.
Every person who works at Camp Leopard is from the surrounding villages. Our chef Chaminda is local. Our housekeeper Priyadarshika is local. Our safari rangers are Sri Lankan. Our jeep drivers own their own vehicles and are paid directly. There is no recruitment agency, no staffing company, no outsourced labour.
Our food supply chain is almost entirely local. Rice comes from the nearby paddies. Vegetables come from village gardens. Fish comes from the southern coast. Spices come from smallholders. When we need something that is not available locally, we buy it from Sri Lankan suppliers, not imported brands.
We estimate that approximately 70% of every dollar a guest spends at Camp Leopard stays within the local economy. That includes wages, food procurement, jeep hire, fuel, maintenance, and community contributions. Compare that to a large hotel chain where the majority flows out to foreign owners, international supply chains, and corporate headquarters abroad.
This is not charity. It is a business model. Local supply chains are fresher, more responsive, and more resilient. Our food is better because it comes from the village, not from a warehouse in Colombo. Our service is better because our team lives here, knows the land, and cares about its reputation.
Ecological Regeneration
Camp Leopard sits in the Katagamuwa buffer zone, at the edge of Yala National Park. This is not park land, but it is wildlife land. Elephants, leopards, jackals, and monitor lizards move through the property regularly. Coexistence is not a concept here. It is a daily reality.
No barriers: Camp Leopard has no fences, no walls, and no barriers between the camp and the surrounding wilderness. Animals move freely through the property. This is a deliberate choice. We believe that if you build a camp in the wild, the wild should still be able to use that land.
Light discipline: All lights at camp are LED and are switched off by 10:30pm. Artificial light disrupts nocturnal wildlife, particularly insects and the animals that feed on them. Our light-out policy means the buffer zone remains functionally dark after 10:30pm, which is how it should be.
Tree planting: The property was abandoned and degraded when Marc took it over in 2016. Since then, we have planted native species to restore canopy cover and provide habitat for birds, insects, and small mammals. The garden, maintained by Sadharuwan, is designed to blend with the surrounding scrub rather than replace it.
Waste management: All organic waste is composted on site. Non-organic waste is separated and sent to recycling where possible. We use no single-use plastics in guest areas. Water is filtered on site rather than purchased in bottles.
Safari ethics: Our rangers follow strict ethical guidelines inside the park. No chasing, no off-road driving, no crowding sightings, no engine revving to provoke reactions. We maintain distance, read animal behaviour, and leave when an animal shows signs of stress. This is not a rule imposed on us. It is how we believe safaris should be conducted.
Cultural Regeneration
This is the dimension that most tourism operations miss entirely. Regenerative tourism should not just protect culture. It should actively strengthen it.
Sri Lankan food, not international menus: Our kitchen serves Sri Lankan food. Rice and curry. Hoppers. Kottu. Pol sambol. We do not offer a Western menu with a Sri Lankan option. The default is Sri Lankan, because that is where you are, and our chef Chaminda's cooking is consistently rated as the best food experience guests have had on the island.
Kataragama temple: We encourage every guest to visit the Kataragama temple complex, one of Sri Lanka's most sacred pilgrimage sites, just 15 minutes from camp. The evening pooja ceremony, with drums, fire, and the sacred Menik Ganga river, is one of the most powerful cultural experiences in southern Sri Lanka. We arrange tuk tuk transport and brief guests on etiquette and history before they go.
Ranger knowledge: Our safari rangers do not just find animals. They share the cultural context of the landscape. The names of leopards come from Sinhala. The ancient irrigation tanks in the park were built by Sri Lankan kings. The rock monastery at Sithulpawwa dates back over 2,000 years. A safari with Camp Leopard is a cultural experience as much as a wildlife one.
The Pekoe Trail Connection
Camp Leopard's founder Marc is also the Executive Director of the Pekoe Trail, Sri Lanka's first long-distance walking trail through the tea country of the central highlands. The Pekoe Trail was built on the same principles: community ownership, local economic benefit, and cultural preservation.
Guests who combine a Camp Leopard safari with a section of the Pekoe Trail experience two very different landscapes, both operated with the same regenerative philosophy. From the dry lowland scrub of Yala to the misty tea plantations of the hill country, the through-line is the same: tourism that leaves a place better than it found it.
The Honest Bit
We are not perfect. We use diesel jeeps for safari drives because electric alternatives do not exist for Yala's terrain. We generate waste that we cannot fully recycle because Sri Lanka's recycling infrastructure outside Colombo is limited. Our carbon footprint from international guests flying to Sri Lanka is significant, and no amount of tree planting offsets that honestly.
But we believe the direction matters more than the current position. Every year, we try to move closer to a model where Camp Leopard actively improves the place it operates in. That is what regenerative means, and it is a journey, not a destination.