Afforestation policy endangers Bangladesh’s wildlife: by UNB Staff Writer Sheikh Adnan Fahad

Published On: 2008-01-19 in Daily Star, Metropolitan page


The present afforestation policy has endangered Bangladesh's rare species of wildlife because it is unsuitable for her ecological balance and biodiversity.

Experts said Bangladesh should review its afforestation policy to make it helpful for the wildlife by making the environment suitable for their habitation.

“Bangladesh is implementing a British afforestation policy of 1873. In the name of afforestation, we're actually doing plantation. Our own natural forests are being destroyed while foreign trees are being planted across the country,” Prof Kazi Zaker Husain, head of The Wildlife Society of Bangladesh, told UNB yesterday.

Prof Husain said some 80 percent of the exotic trees planted under the afforestation programme have been imported from foreign countries.

The existence of rare species of wildlife, including Hoolock Gibbon (known as Ulluk in Bangladesh), wild elephant, deer, and various types of tigers, are at stake due to plantation of these imported trees.

“By planting these you can increase the number of trees, but cannot protect the environment and biodiversity,” Prof Zaker said.

The animals are directly or indirectly dependent on trees for their survival. The trees and animals are living through co-evolution in a particular place for thousands of hundreds of years. “If you cut down such trees now, then what will happen to the animals? The foreign trees are completely unknown to them,” Prof Zaker said.

He said Bangladesh is creating mono-culture forests where only one type of tree is being planted in a vast tract of land which is destructive for the wild animals.

“In a natural forest, many kinds of trees are available on which various species of animals find food and environment to live on.

But in a mono-culture forest, only one type of tree is available, that's why animals find it difficult to live on the same trees for scarcity of food and ecological support,” added Prof Zaker.

Elephants, for example, need banana trees and bamboo saplings as their food. “But in Bangladesh, to recover the lost or destroyed natural forests, we usually plant one type of tree and we don't allow any small trees like bamboo or banana trees over the area. Thus we get some trees in a particular area. But at the same time we destroy the food stock of the animals,” he said.

Prof Zaker said Bangladesh should stop the mono-culture afforestation programme immediately as it needs afforestation on the lands where natural forests have been destroyed. “Those lands only require protection for the natural growth of local trees.”

Prof Anwarul Islam, chief executive of Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh (WTB), said 10 percent of the country's total land can be declared as protected areas where local trees will grow naturally.

Considering the economic interest of the people and the country, Prof Anwarul said another section of land can be allocated as buffer zone where some fast-growing exotic species of trees would be planted. But the exotic trees will have to be eco-friendly.

“For timber and firewood, we can make some buffer zones. Exotic trees can be planted in the buffer zones. But the trees will have to be selected through deep research,” he added.