Lathitila is a protected green forest in Juri upazila of Moulvibazar. Another spectacled langur has died there of electrocution, and its baby kept crying without pause after its mother's death.

Local people said the body of a spectacled langur was found beside the Lathitila stream on the night of Friday, 7 April. A baby langur was wailing beside it.

Wildlife experts say these young survive on their mother's milk. Babies this small are hard to save if they cannot suckle, and they do not survive without their mother's touch.

Md Moniruzzaman Hossain, the beat officer in charge of the Forest Department's Lathitila beat, told Jago News that two spectacled langurs had died of electrocution at the same spot in the past two months. "The news is very sad. The baby langur is lying on the road. Local people informed me. I will look into it," he said.

On 1 October last year another spectacled langur died at the same place. On 10 February a dead spectacled langur baby was found beside the road in the Dilkhosh tea garden area near the forest; it too had been electrocuted. Langurs are dying one after another in this way.

Environmental activist Kamrul Hasan Noman, a member of the Patharia wildlife conservation team, said many kinds of wild animals live in the evergreen Lathitila forest. "But if langurs keep dying one after another like this, these animals will soon disappear. Steps to protect them are needed now," he said.

AKM Ashraful Huda, AGM of the Barlekha zonal office of Palli Bidyut (rural electricity), said the Forest Department had written asking them to fit covers on the power lines in the Lathitila reserved forest. "We prepared the design and sent it to the head office. The head office's engineering department handles line construction, but I do not know what stage the matter is at in the head office now," he said.

Dr Mohammad Jahangir Alam, divisional forest officer of the Wildlife Management and Nature Conservation Division, said he did not know about the langur's death and would look into it.

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