Wildlife vanishes for wrong management

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We roamed the Pablakhali forest for two days, inspecting every swamp, every tall tree, every creek, every hill. We listened for the calls. But in the end, we knew the white winged wood ducks no longer exist here. Bangladesh has lost another species.

We wandered through the Madhupur forest in search of barking deer. We asked the people around if they had seen one in the wild. In the end we came to the conclusion that this is yet another lost case for the forest.

As The Daily Star team travelled with Dr Reza Khan, a renowned wildlife expert, for days through some of the country’s prime forests, it dawned on us that the forest department is neither capable of preserving the forest nor is it able to conserve the wildlife.

Dr Khan, from his worldwide experience, then suggested some new mechanisms that might save the both — forest and wildlife.

He said the IUCN has an international commission for protected areas thorough which it has categorised the world’s natural reserves and forests into four categories. Under the first category falls the huge nature reserves ranging from 100 square kilometres to a couple of thousand square kilometres, where public access is very limited or zero. Here public interaction is kept to a minimum level. National parks are always managed scientifically by a body under a wildlife conservation entity.

In the second category comes the wildlife sanctuary where people’s activities may be allowed within buffer zones. The core zones are kept for scientific studies and proper management.

In the last category falls the game reserves such as elephant reserve like that in Teknaf where people can go and see the animals on a regular basis up to the core zone.

And then comes the public parks which are open to people all the time and are managed by the wildlife entity.

Under the 1973 Wildlife Act, some reserve forest areas were declared as national parks and sanctuaries but since then no management structure was put in place. No specific people were put in charge of these individual sanctuaries or parks. They were all put under the umbrella of supervision by territorial divisional forest officers (DFOs).

“The territorial DFOs are too much involved in managing the forests and producing revenue for the government. They have no time for wildlife management,” pointed out Dr Reza Khan. “The sanctuaries have not been marked yet with markings on trees or lanes as is the practice in other countries.”

Pablakhali sanctuary is one of the oldest wildlife sanctuaries. In 1981, ten pairs of white winged wood ducks were present in this and the neighbouring forests. This duck variety is one of the rarest species deemed to be also critically endangered worldwide. A few dozen pairs are left in Assam, Myanmar and Indonesia. The total world population of the duck is less than 1,000.

“Today, none of the ducks are found in Pablakhali as they have either been killed or their habitation was destroyed with the felling of tall trees above 30 feet.

The same fate was experienced by the crab-eating macaque which once roamed from Whykeong to Teknaf in the coastal mangrove forest on the bank of Naaf river. During 1980s the forest department allowed the fisheries department to take over this area for shrimp cultivation. In exchange, the forest department was supposed to get some areas for wildlife reserve or bird sanctuary elsewhere from the ministry of fisheries and land administration.

“Immediately after taking possession of the land, the fisheries department leased out the land to private entrepreneurs who chopped off the forest and forced the macaques to leave Bangladesh for Myanmar,” Dr Khan said. “For the forest department’s actions, the country lost the monkey and the forest as well. Biologically the monkey variety was important because it represented the western most limit of the species that ranged from Indonesia to Bangladesh.”.

The Madhupur forest is another example of how wildlife disappears under the nose of the forest department. From 1970s up to 1980s several hundred capped langurs and almost an equal number of rhesus macaques and barking deer were present there. Currently, these animals are seldom found in the forest where deer have totally disappeared.

“Among the larger birds we had lesser adjutant stork, grey headed fishing eagle, brown wood owl, crested honey buzzard, crested serpent eagle and several other species of day time and night time birds of prey that used to be seen regularly in Madhupur,” Dr Khan said.

Now they cannot be sighted anymore in spite of the fact that a portion of the forest was declared as national park, proving management failure.

The irony of Madhupur forest is that one Bangla newspaper reported that there are so many monkeys at the forest that they are regularly being run over by buses on the Mymensingh road. Based on such assumptions, the ministry of forest and the Moll Enterprise of the USA entered into an agreement to take loads of monkeys from Bangladesh for research in the US. Finally, under pressure from the International Primate Protection League (IPPL) and local environmentalists who raised the issue at international forums and the local media, the Bangladesh government scrapped the agreement.

“So to change the situation, we must create a separate wildlife department equivalent to the forest and environment departments,” Dr Khan said. “When the environment department was separated from the forest ministry, it had far fewer manpower or budget than the wildlife circle that the present forest department has. The forest department should allocate fund for the wildlife department taking into account the sanctuaries and national parks and game reserves it has created. And also the environmentally critical areas declared by the environment department without taking into cognition of the existing wildlife act. The wildlife department should have its own recruitment policy and separate cadre service.”

The wildlife department should take possession of all the wild animal parks, sanctuaries, safaris and zoos and anything belonging to wildlife. Also the department must take charge of management of conservation of biological diversity (CBD), CITES convention of international trade in endangered species of wild fauna and flora. They will have to upgrade the old wildlife act, form a wildlife advisory committee with representatives from zoologists and other professions concerned with wildlife.

“People wanting to get inside the sanctuaries or parks to have a look at the wildlife will need to take permission from the wildlife department for some fees,” Dr Khan said. “The department will serve as field research station for all the universities and other research organisations. This will generate earnings for the department as well.”

The forest department and wildlife department will have to be modernised and its rangers need to be better equipped with firearms and training. All people living in the buffer zones must be involved in the management of the sanctuaries as guides, forest department employees, guards etc.

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