This has given rise to fears that the site's unique and endangered biodiversity is doomed.
"It is clear that there are rich and powerful individuals, both domestic and foreign, who have benefited from the wanton rape of the Hakgala Strict Natural Reserve," says the report.
"There undoubtedly exist short-term political and economic gains from destroying biodiversity in areas such as Hakgala for agriculture.
"More significantly there is enormous potential for income from exploiting the land for quarrying, mining, removal of earth and setting up hotels in places of scenic beauty."
Blind Eye
The report says that poor, landless peasants are initially allowed to encroach, encouraged by politicians from the local to the highest levels, with the authorities turning a blind eye.
" . . . the profits and gains from the illegally occupied land inevitably end up with the politically powerful individuals who have been behind the land clearance from the start.
"Ownership and control of fragile State lands thus pass to a tiny (and politically powerful) percentage of the population and to outside forces.
"The end result is that land is degraded, soil eroded and polluted, ecosystem services and biodiversity are lost, and the majority of the population suffers."
Encroachment has been both by small-scale cultivators and the former state-owned Ambewela Farm, EFL says.
The Environmental Foundation Ltd report says the combined area of encroachment by small-scale cultivators far exceeds that of the Ambewela Farm.
"Since the 1980s this land grabbing has continued, largely unabated. Ambewela Farm has been sold to a commercial conglomerate, and there is massive lobbying for the issuing of title deeds to those now illegally occupying land."
Myth
The public interest law firm cited recent reports from the area that politicians are working with high-ranking wildlife officials to delay the implementation of court judgements made in both 1988 and two decades later in 2007.
"Many government officials have themselves benefited from illegal land allocation and encroachment into Hakgala."
EFL says that a deliberately myth is being perpetuated by those behind the illegal encroachments, that their overall aim is to empower the poor and landless and to equip them with secure access to land.
"Long experience, repeated in many other parts of the country, shows that no sooner title deeds are issued then they are sold, often at ludicrously low prices and frequently to local and national power-brokers and elites."
The ‘poor and disadvantaged communities’ merely become hired labour for the land grabbers who live far away in Sri Lanka’s towns and cities or who have sought citizenship in other countries.
Hakgala Strict Natural Reserve is one of the nation’s most important protected areas, being the only one at high altitude.
Biodiversity Hotspot
Strict Natural Reserves are protected as pure natural systems and represent the most protective protected area management regime, where fauna and flora are preserved in their natural state, and no extractive land or resource uses are allowed in them.
Protected areas were set up in order to safeguard sites and species which are considered to be of overriding importance to the nation and the world in terms of their natural and cultural heritage, says EFL.
It says that the categorisation of Sri Lanka as a global biodiversity hotspot not only indicates that the country contains an exceptionally high number of unique plant and animal species, but also that at least 70 percent of the natural habitats that these species inhabit have already been lost.
"The plant and animal species in Hakgala are rare, unique and endangered," the EFL report says.
"Many also have a high commercial value. For decades now, there has been systematic cutting of trees for timber, and extensive felling has taken place in some areas.
"Other commercially valuable species have also been over-harvested, including medicinal and ornamental plants."
Strict nature reserves are tightly protected by law and visitors are not allowed into such areas, other than approved researchers.
However some activists say that as a result, poaching as well as encroachment goes on hidden from the public eye inside strict nature reserves as opposed to protected areas that are open to the public where it is difficult for clandestine activities to continue.
Analysts have pointed out that high tea prices have also resulted in encroachments into the Sinharaja forest reserve, a global biodiversity hotspot for low grown tea cultivation.
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