Hard-pressed to find space for a massive influx of Rohingya Muslim refugees, Bangladesh plans to chop down forest trees to extend a tent city sheltering destitute families fleeing ethnic violence in neighbouring Myanmar.
More than half a million Rohingya have arrived from Myanmar's Rakhine State since the end of August in what the UN has called the world's fastest-developing refugee emergency.
The exodus began after Myanmar security forces responded to Rohingya militants' attacks on August 25 by launching a brutal crackdown that the UN has denounced as ethnic cleansing.
Myanmar has rejected that accusation, insisting that the military action was needed to combat "terrorists" who had killed civilians and burnt villages.
But it has left Bangladesh and international humanitarian organisations counting the cost as they race to provide life-saving food, water and medical care for the displaced Rohingya.
Simply finding enough empty ground to accommodate the refugees is a huge problem.
"The government allocated 2,000 acres when the number of refugees was nearly 400,000," Mohammad Shah Kamal, Bangladesh's secretary of disaster management and relief, told Reuters on Thursday.
"Now that the numbers have gone up by more than 100,000 and people are still coming. So, the government has to allocate 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of forest land.”
Once all the trees are felled, aid workers plan to put up 150,000 tarpaulin shelters in their place.
Swamped by refugees, poor Bangladeshi villagers are faced with mounting hardships and worries, including the trafficking of illegal drugs, particularly methamphetamines, from Myanmar.
"The situation is very bad," said Kazi Abdur Rahman, a senior official in the Bangladesh border district of Cox's Bazar, where most of the Rohingya are settled.
"People in Cox's Bazar are concerned, we are also concerned, but there's nothing we can do but accommodate them."
The pressure on the land is creating another conflict, this time environmental rather than ethnic.
Last month, wild elephants trampled two refugees to death and Rahman said more such encounters appeared inevitable as more forest is destroyed.