Wild animals, especially monkeys, langurs, deer, elephants, tigers and snakes, often stray into human settlements and harm ordinary people, writes Dr Forkan Ali, a researcher and former principal. Besides damage to property, people sometimes lose their lives to these animals. With sanctuaries for elephants and other wildlife damaged, attacks by wild elephants in hill areas have increased.

Herds of wild elephants repeatedly raid Banshkhali and Chandanaish. In the remote Dhopachhari, Jangal Jamijuri, Dohazari and Lalutia hill areas of Chandanaish upazila, 15-20 wild elephants have launched one attack after another, damaging more than a hundred homes and destroying wide fields of crops and guava orchards. Wild elephants are also being seen deep in the forests of Banshkhali upazila, and locals fear the herd could attack settlements at any time.

Many people have died in elephant attacks in villages of Banshkhali upazila in recent times, and thousands of families in Patiya, Satkania, Boalkhali and Lohagara live in fear. In the deep forests of southern Chattogram, forest bandits are stealing trees. With the collusion of the Forest Department and forest leaseholders, timber is being stolen and farmers are growing tobacco on forest land, felling trees indiscriminately for fuel to cure the tobacco. Irrigating tobacco from local water bodies is drying up the natural hill ponds where elephants, monkeys, jackals, wild boar, other animals and birds used to drink, and where elephants used to make their homes.

Years of deforestation and the destruction of water bodies have broken the forest food chain. Short of food and water, elephants are coming into settlements, destroying hill people's jhum crops, homes, ripe paddy, vegetable fields, guava, jackfruit, pineapple and other crops. People who try to stop them are injured or killed. In the past 20 years, wild elephant attacks have killed about 200 people in various upazilas of southern Chattogram, including in the forests and settlements of Banshkhali, and injured more than a thousand.

In Madaripur, Jashore and Shariatpur, langurs short of food and shelter are leaving their range and coming into settlements. Greedy people take a share of the food the government supplies to protect them, so what the langurs get is not enough. Human greed, short-sightedness and population growth have led to indiscriminate felling of trees, leaving monkeys and langurs without places to live. Driven by hunger, they take things from homes, snatch belongings and damage fruit and crops, provoking a backlash; many hungry langurs pay with their lives.

In villages around the Sundarbans, Royal Bengal tigers and snakes have become more troublesome. In search of food, tigers enter villages and attack people and livestock, killing cattle and goats, and when they find none, people fall prey. Villagers live in fear and beat tigers to death when they can reach them, so the number of tigers in the Sundarbans is falling. Wildlife experts say that about 97,000 tigers have been lost worldwide in the past hundred years, and it will not take long for the 3,000 to 3,500 that remain to disappear. Because of deforestation and killing, the tiger is now near the top of the list of endangered animals.

Experts say that if this species cannot be saved, biodiversity, the Sundarbans and its wildlife cannot be protected either. Global warming from climate change, deforestation and other causes threaten the Sundarbans' biodiversity, while food shortages, indiscriminate killing of wildlife and habitat destruction have put the Royal Bengal tiger in deep crisis. Yet the Sundarbans protected Bangladesh and its people from Sidr in 2008, Aila afterwards and many other disasters, the writer notes, and people have ungratefully set about destroying it.

Professor Islam, executive chairman of the non-government organisation Wildlife Trust Bangladesh, has said: "At the rate the spotted deer, the tiger's main prey, is declining, their food will be extinct before the tigers disappear." The tiger's prey in the Sundarbans includes spotted deer, wild boar, barking deer and monkeys, all declining. Experts say natural disasters, environmental degradation, rising salinity, lack of prey and the silting of canals and rivers near settlements are steadily increasing conflict between tigers and people.

Nature has already begun to respond to reckless human activity with excessive rain, drought, untimely floods and cyclones, while people suffer new diseases and many plants and animals cannot survive. A recent study of Bangladesh's wildlife by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that because of harmful human activity and climate change, about 25 per cent of the world's plants and animals will be wiped out within the next 15 years.

The report says Bangladesh had 388 resident bird species and 244 species that come from other countries. Of these, 12 are already extinct and 30 more are fast heading that way. The country once had 110 species of mammals, 40 of which the IUCN has placed in its Red Data Book. There were more than 5,000 plants, including medicinal, forest and fruit species, and experts estimate 10 per cent are already extinct. According to the Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute, the country once had 166 species of freshwater and 442 of marine fish; many have now disappeared because of climate change, and the IUCN has listed 54 fish species in its Red Data Book.

Environmental experts say a country needs 25 per cent of its area under forest, but Bangladesh's position is very fragile. According to multinational aid agency surveys and the forestry master plan, Bangladesh has 769 thousand hectares of forest, only 6 per cent of its area. According to the Forest Department, however, forest now covers 11 lakh hectares, or 7.7 per cent of the country. Either way, the writer says, the country faces grave danger in terms of forest cover.

A UN report says 10 lakh hectares of tropical forest are lost worldwide every year, amounting to 1 crore 70 lakh hectares over a decade. According to the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, 30 lakh hectares of forest have been lost, far more than the area of Bangladesh. A growing population is putting pressure on forests and farmland for shelter and fuel. In Satkhira and Cox's Bazar, forests are being cleared for shrimp farming, and trees on the coast are being felled for housing projects, hotels, motels and markets. The forest of a large area of Cox's Bazar, including Chakaria, has been completely destroyed, mainly by shrimp farming.

The traditional sal forests of Dhaka, Rangpur, Dinajpur and Rajshahi are now almost gone. Experts warn that unless deforestation, hill cutting, river grabbing, dumping of factory waste into rivers and excessive use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides stop, a large part of Bangladesh will turn to desert, with serious effects on global warming. Sea level has risen by 10-26 cm in the past 100 years. Coastal areas make up 32 per cent of Bangladesh, home to about 3 crore people. According to environmental scientists Priyalal Mutsuddi and SK Galib, climate change will raise sea level by 45 cm (one and a half feet) by 2050, flooding 10-16 per cent of the coastal land and badly damaging production and infrastructure there.

Most worrying of all, data from various sources suggest that by 2080 between 110 and 300 crore people will face severe water shortages and biodiversity in developing countries will be under grave threat. Tigers, elephants, langurs and monkeys entering settlements, more frequent disasters, arsenic in groundwater and new diseases all show that biodiversity is not in a normal state. People must rise above greed and protect the country's natural water bodies and forests, and make sure no animal on land or in water loses its habitat or food.

To grow and protect more crops, the use of organic fertiliser and vermicompost must be increased, and care taken over pesticide use, so that farmland is protected. If the natural balance and farmland cannot be protected to ensure food security amid global warming, climate change and the destruction of biodiversity, the writer warns, we must be ready for a terrible nightmare. Wild animals can at least come to settlements in search of shelter and food, he asks, but where will people go in a similar crisis?

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.