The government’s indifference towards conservation of forests and biodiversity has caused fast depletion of the country’s forest areas, pushing most of the flora and fauna into danger, professionals have said.
“Saving forests should be the first initiative to save the biodiversity living there,” Yunus Ali, the chief conservator of forest, said at the inauguration of a workshop titled Updating Species Red List of Bangladesh Project at the capital’s Spectra Convention Centre yesterday.
The Red List estimates the risk of extinction of a certain species which will help to take conservation plans and setting priority.
“It [saving forests] is not happening in most cases due to the intervention of local policymakers, and to some extent, the respected heads of authorities, including the minister himself,” Yunus said.
Citing an example of the Madhupur sal forest, he said the area had come down to around 10,000 hectares from around 45,000 hectares. “The forest has now turned into an orchard of banana and pineapple,” he added.
Ishtiaq Uddin Ahmad, county representative for the IUCN Bangladesh, echoed Yunus.
He later told the Dhaka Tribune that like the Madhupur forest, other prominent sal forests, including the one in Mymensingh-Gazipur, had been disappearing due to wrong policy intervention of the government.
The Mymensingh-Gazipur sal forest that spreads over an area of around 65,000 hectares was depleting for not being declared as a reserved forest. “These activities put the wildlife in a vulnerable situation,” Ishtiaq said.
The former chief forest conservator said the government should take initiatives to transform the exiting forest areas into reserve forests to save the land from grabbers and industrialisation.
The Updating Species Red List of Bangladesh Project was jointly launched by the IUCN and the Forest Department and will end by 2015.
In 2000, the IUCN published a Red List of Fauna Species in Bangladesh, covering the status of 895 species under five categories – mammals, birds, amphibians, fish and reptiles.
According to the list, different types of species including Gangetic ghorial, saltwater crocodile, hoolock gibbon, phayre’s leaf monkey, ritha fish, pungus fish and baghair fish were labelled as “critically endangered” due to habitat loss and food scarcity.
The new Red List will include two more categories – butterfly and crustacean (snails, crabs and shrimps), and the number of species will be increased to around 1,700.
