Editorial
Madhupur and the loss of our forests
Ecological balance has to be restored
BIOLOGICAL diversity looks about to be a thing of the past in Bangladesh, if the state of the Madhupur forests is any indication. A well-documented report in this newspaper yesterday threw up all the insidious details of the way the forests have been ravaged over the last forty years and in their place have come projects ostensibly geared to development. Just how such so-called development programmes can wreak damage on nature has been made clear in the Madhupur forests. In the last four decades, as much as 85 per cent of the forests have vanished. That means the overall area of the forests has come down from 45,000 acres to a mere 8,000 acres today. In spaces where woodland trees and plants essential for herbal medicines used to be, there are today banana and pineapple plantations. More ominously, human settlements have also been set up in the forests, thus posing even more serious threats to the environment.
The conditions we notice in Madhupur today are but a sad reflection of what has been happening to forests all across the country. It is generally the idea that 25 per cent of a country's land mass will be covered by forests; and indeed there used to be a time when greenery formed a major part of the Bangladesh landscape. That unfortunately is not the reality any more. Today, forests cover less than 10 per cent of the land, a clear sign of how human predatory instincts have systematically undermined the ecological balance in the country. As the Madhupur instance demonstrates, natural trees have been cut down and replaced with plant species such as acacia, eucalyptus, rubber and the like. Amazingly, such replacement of natural trees has been the result of donor-funded projects, which again means that apart from the criminal elements engaging in the destruction of the forests, there have been forest department officials themselves who have contributed, wittingly or otherwise, to their shrinking. Where the role of the authorities should have been a promotion of conservation and keeping tabs on those ready to profit from a destruction of trees, they appear to have speeded up the process of the destruction. Indeed, ideas such as building eco parks in Madhupur at the cost of the woodlands and to the detriment of the indigenous people who have lived there for ages have also placed the forests at risk.
In such conditions, there arises a huge need for corrective measures to be taken. For years various governments in the country have been crying hoarse about the need for trees to be planted throughout the country. Not much attention seems to have been given, though, to the natural forests which have been shrinking rapidly. Such a policy of looking away from reality must be reversed, drastically, if a proper ecological balance is to be restored. And, yes, the fact that those who have been ruining the forests through the years must be hunted down and brought to book. Exemplary punishment is so much a necessity in such cases of crime.
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