Blasts blown out of proportion

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The heat was stifling. Sweat rolled down in drops and showed through T-shirts. In the deep Lawachhara rain forest, the workers in bright red overalls and white helmets were busy securing the explosive line. And then there was nothing else to do but wait. The big yellow remote explosion box with a long antennae lay on the ground, occasionally the wireless fixed to it cackling–the man at the other end of a wave recording van somewhere in a far away tea garden called for patience. Somewhere the explosive lines had been disrupted.

A good forest is never silent. Lawachhara, one of the rare rain forests of the country, was full of noises of all kinds. Thousands of cicadas were producing ear-piercing noises, rubbing their body parts together. Sometimes it sounded like the sawmill, then it was thousands of jet engines revving, again it turned into mysterious noises coming from space. We checked on the sound machine–66 decibels. A hill myna was out there making loud calls to mimic at least six different birds. These are the rascals who always mimic others and hardly make their own calls. A green-billed malkoha cackled loudly and then went silent. A rustle in the hill only about 60 metres away revealed a pig-tailed monkey–big and proud–foraging the forest bed.

Two hours went and still no news from the recording van. Then the radio cackled again and the “shooter”–the main man who detonates the explosives–quickly got up on his feet. He quickly attached two wires to the big yellow box and checked on the instruments. Then we heard the first sound–a dull boom somewhere in the forest, then another and another.

Chevron’s 3D seismic survey had started. Earlier in the day, we saw the explosion sites like small domes of about two feet in diameter where the earth had been bored up to 70 feet to set the explosives.

The shooter tweaked with a black knob on the yellow box and then pushed the red one. We waited 25 metres away in apprehension, our ears and body strained. Then came the noise–a dull thud and almost instant vibration under our feet for a second. A few dry leaves fell off the trees and it was over. We checked on the sound meter–52 decibels, lower than the noise the cicadas were making. The myth of Chevron “causing loud explosions to destroy the forest” was broken to us!

Later, we talked to the IUCN zoologist who accompanied the blasting team to the site if he had noticed any disturbance to the wildlife. “No, nothing at all,” was the reply. Later in the day, we met Ronald Haldar, a doctor-turned-environmentalist who happened to have witnessed the explosions. He was also of the same view–the explosions are so mild and so brief that they hardly mattered.

Strangely, these observations starkly clash with the Lawachhara forester’s testimony. He said the “blasts” are so loud that once he even fell off on the ground. “They [Chevron] are disturbing the forest with loud bangs and I am afraid the does which are now pregnant may have abortion from the noise,” he said.

Obviously, he was not telling the truth and he might have reasons to distort facts. But the survey was undoubtedly badly timed. This is the breeding and nesting time for birds and animals and the widespread infiltration of survey workers into the forest will disturb them to some extent. We saw at least three jackals and a jungle cat, expecting babies any time and they looked frightened. It was also time for the hooded pitta to fly all the way from Southeast Asia for breeding at Lawachhara.

“When the explosion sites were chosen, we checked whether there were any bird nests around,” said the IUCN zoologist, one of many who are constantly accompanying the blasting teams. “On many occasions we changed the sites because of nesting birds.”

Phil Johnston, chief geophysicist of Chevron, said they have observed some “light movement” of birds after explosions and stated that the blasts never produce noises louder than 60 decibels.

“In fact, we wanted to start the survey in January to avoid the breeding season, but the permission came late and so we had no choice but to start it now,” Johnston said.

Asked what Chevron would do if gas reserves are found inside the forest, Phil said they would “never dig well in the forest and would go for directional drilling from outside the forest”. This means they would dig the well outside the forest and then bend the pipes to reach reserves inside the forest that would not affect the forest.

“This is a rare piece of forest and we do not intend to damage it in any way,” he said.

But the forest was damaged in a small area of one acre anyway when a fire broke out in a hill. Chevron has denied its responsibilities, saying the survey was not a cause for the fire and that it did not have its people there when the fire broke out. Bangladesh Forest Research Institute has made an estimate that 900 plants of various species and at least 28 big trees were destroyed in the fire. The place still smells of ash and looks barren. Both the Forest Department and locals said Chevron workers were in the area and had lunch before the fire and they left the place just about 40 minutes before the flames leapt up. We found explosive sites, wires and equipment only about 15 feet from the fire spot. With all likeliness, one of the survey workers had callously thrown a burning cigarette butt to cause the inferno, but there are no witnesses and Chevron forbids its workers to carry any matches or cigarettes to the forest.

However, as we roamed the forest, we found a different kind of threat to the forest. Thousands of sawed-off tree stumps tell the story of the mass-scale illegal logging that is going on inside Lawachhara. And many would say it happens in connivance with the foresters. In the two days we spent in the forest, never had we met the famous holook gibbons that Lawachhara is so famous for. We once heard their loud cries though.

The 11 groups of gibbons that live in the forest will eventually vanish as illegal loggers are felling the tall trees. These primates live on the high canopies and once the tall trees are gone, they will go too.

And more than the survey teams, “tourists” are causing disturbances to the wildlife. Blaring loudspeakers, thousands of people throng the forest everyday and the forest authorities are just a silent spectator to the onslaught. The “picnic parties” litter the forest at will and scare away the birds and monkeys.

The natural forest that Lawachhara is supposed to be is today only a shade of what it was and is vanishing fast.

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