Pythons leave the Mirsarai hills for villages as food runs short

Shrinking habitat and a shortage of food were driving pythons and other reptiles down from the hills of Mirsarai upazila in Chattogram into villages, where many became trapped, Jagonews24 reported on 30 October 2024. More than 15 pythons had entered settlements in different unions of the upazila over the previous year, most of them caught in the nets that farmers stretch around crop fields near the hills. In 2024 alone, three pythons had been trapped in Karerhat union. Every python found was released back into the hill forest, the Forest Department's local range officer said.

The most recent case before the report came on 16 October 2024. Members of the Wildlife and Snake Rescue Team rescued a 12-foot python that had become tangled in a net in the yard of a house in the Thakurdighi area of Durgapur union. The snake was unhurt, and it was released in the forest at Mahamaya, the country's second-largest man-made lake, which lies in the same union.

Earlier, on 9 September 2024, officials of the Karerhat range rescued another python, 13 feet long, from the Chhattarua area of Karerhat union and released it in the forest.

The pattern described in the report was consistent: the pythons were found not deep in the forest but on farmland close to the hills and in the yards of homes, and most were held fast by netting that had been put up to protect crops. Once caught, the snakes could not get free, and they stayed there until they were found and the rescuers or the Forest Department were called.

The report's own inquiries found that more than five hundred snakes had entered villages in Mirsarai over the previous year and a half, and that the Forest Department and rescue team members had rescued 165 of them from villages and released them in the forest. Zoologists quoted in the report said that, because of climate change, the areas where reptiles live were becoming short of water as well as food. In the hill areas of the Chattogram Hill Tracts in particular, they said, streams and waterfalls stayed dry for most of the year, and animals that came into villages in search of food were losing their lives.

According to the Mirsarai unit of the Wildlife and Snake Rescue Team in Bangladesh (WSRTBD), a volunteer group that rescues snakes and other wild animals, more than 150 snakes had been rescued alive in Mirsarai in the previous year, 15 of them pythons. The venomous species among them were the monocled cobra, the greater black krait, the banded krait and the green pit viper. The non-venomous species included the python, the rat snake (locally dhaman), the dudhraj, the ghorgini, the green vine snake (laudoga), the checkered keelback (hele) and the bet anchra. Most of the snakes were rescued in three unions: Karerhat, Zorarganj and Durgapur.

The Forest Department's Mirsarai range officer, Shahansha Naushad, said pythons and other snakes, short of food, came at different times to farmland near the hills and to the yards of homes, and became trapped there. Fifteen pythons had entered villages in Mirsarai in the past year, he said, and all of them had been released in the hill forest with the help of the snake rescue team.

Md Naimul Islam Niloy, a senior rescuer and the group's Chattogram district representative, said its members did the rescue work as volunteers and at their own expense, to protect biodiversity. They received no help from the Forest Department or the government, he said, and the work would go faster if they did.

The upazila livestock officer, Dr Zakirul Farid, said the pythons and other snakes that had been rescued had no wounds or serious injuries. An injured animal is usually kept under observation and treated, he said, but because these animals were unhurt they needed no treatment.

The explanations in the report came from the officials who handle the animals. The range officer put the movement down to a lack of food. The livestock officer said that any wild animal comes out into human settlements when its habitat is under threat and food is short. In the case of pythons, too, he said, shrinking habitat was causing a food shortage, so they travelled long distances into populated areas in search of food, and in doing so often entered villages and could not get out again. The zoologists quoted in the report added the drying of hill streams and the wider effects of climate change.

Earlier reporting from the same area pointed in the same direction. In January 2024 The Daily Star reported that the Chattogram forest department had planted 150,000 trees of different species on 60 hectares on the bank of Mahamaya lake, as part of a reforestation effort to create habitat for birds, since bird numbers in Bangladesh were falling because of habitat loss from rapid urbanisation. The species planted included dhaki-jaam, bhat, haritaki, bahera, amloki, dumur and kadam, and the project cost Tk 60 lakh. An environmental activist, Jahangir Kabir Tutul, told the paper that wildlife, including birds, had left the surrounding areas after being forced out by deforestation. The Mirsarai range officer, who was also in charge of Mahamaya lake, said the department hoped the area would have a rich variety of birds within five years, and the divisional forest officer of the Chattogram North Forest Division, SM Khaiser, said the area would be fenced once the trees matured, to protect birds from predators and poachers.

A python's diet explains why farmland draws it. Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia published by the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, says pythons in Bangladesh eat mammals, birds and reptiles, with a preference for mammals such as rats, hares, goats, sheep, jackals and deer, and kill their prey by constriction. The WHO's regional snakebite guidelines likewise advise against keeping livestock, especially chickens, inside the house, because they are potential prey for larger snakes and also attract the rodents that many snakes hunt.

Mirsarai is an upazila of Chattogram district, and Banglapedia gives its area as about 482.88 square kilometres. It borders the Indian state of Tripura and the Chhagalnaiya and Feni Sadar upazilas to the north, Sitakunda upazila and the Bay of Bengal to the south, Fatikchhari upazila to the east, and the Sonagazi and Companiganj upazilas to the west. It has 16 unions, among them Karerhat, Zorwarganj (Zorarganj), Durgapur, Khaiyachhara, Hinguli and Wahedpur. At the 2011 census it had 398,716 people.

As the Jagonews24 report describes it, much of the upazila's farmland lies close to the hills, so fields and forest meet. Agriculture is the largest source of income, accounting for 38.93 per cent according to Banglapedia, and the main crops are paddy, pulses, potato, brinjal, other vegetables and bamboo; the main fruits are mango, jackfruit, banana, papaya, litchi and pineapple. The Feni is the main river, and the Mahamaya, Isakhali, Domkhali, Hinguli and Mayani are among the notable canals. Banglapedia lists the Karerhat Forest Range among the upazila's features, the same range whose officials carried out the September rescue.

Mahamaya lake, where the October python was released, lies in Durgapur union. It is the reservoir of the Mahamaya irrigation project, which was begun in the 2007-08 financial year, completed in 2009 and inaugurated on 29 December 2010 at a cost of about Tk 230 million. It supplies irrigation water to about 3,360 hectares and is described as the second-largest man-made lake in Bangladesh after Kaptai lake. The report describes the release site as the forest of Mahamaya, and the bird plantation described above was made on the same lake's bank.

The python, ajagar in Bengali, is a large non-venomous snake. Banglapedia records two species in Bangladesh: the rock python and the reticulated python. The rock python is the country's largest snake, reaching about 5.7 metres. Both live in the mixed evergreen forests of the north-east and south-east of the country, and the rock python is also found in the Sundarbans. Pythons also use rivers, haors and beels, where they swim and often stay near the bank. They breed from December to February, and the eggs are laid three to four months later. The female coils around her eggs to brood them but does not care for the young after they hatch. Python skin has commercial value, Banglapedia notes, and both species have become rare: it lists the rock python as critically endangered and the reticulated python as endangered in Bangladesh.

International references list the Burmese python, Python bivittatus, as native to south-eastern Bangladesh; its range runs through southern and South-East Asia, including eastern India, Myanmar and Thailand. Until 2009 it was treated as a subspecies of the Indian python, Python molurus, the scientific name that Banglapedia and the schedule of the 2012 wildlife Act use for the rock python. Wild Burmese pythons typically reach about 5 metres and average about 3.7 metres. They are mainly nocturnal; the young climb trees while large adults stay mostly on the ground, and they are strong swimmers that can stay under water for up to half an hour. Females lay clutches of 12 to 36 eggs and warm them by twitching their muscles. The species is listed as Vulnerable on the global IUCN Red List, which cites habitat loss and over-harvesting, and it is on Appendix II of CITES, the convention that controls international trade in wildlife.

A python kills its prey by constriction and swallows it whole. The WHO's regional guidelines for South-East Asia note that very large pythons, notably the reticulated python in Indonesia, have occasionally attacked and even swallowed people. Such cases are very rare, and the officials in Mirsarai described the problem the other way round: it was the pythons that were trapped and at risk.

In October 2024 the law in force was the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2012. Its Schedule 1, the list of protected wildlife, includes both the rock python (Python molurus) and the reticulated python (Python reticulatus) under the family Boidae. Section 6 of the Act says no person may hunt any wild animal without a licence or permit issued under the Act, and the Act defines hunting to include killing, capturing or poisoning a wild animal. Under section 39, breaking section 6 is punishable with up to one year in prison, a fine of up to Tk 50,000, or both, and a repeat offence with up to two years in prison, a fine of up to Tk 1 lakh, or both.

The Act also sets out how animals that come into conflict with people are to be handled. Section 8 lets the chief warden, an additional chief warden or a warden take steps to remove, kill or, as the case may be, rehabilitate a wild animal that threatens human life or property, including livestock and crops, recording the reason and reporting to the advisory board and scientific committee within fifteen days. Section 9 says that a captured, rescued or seized wild animal must be released into a suitable natural environment if keeping it in a cage or in confinement would endanger its life. Section 30 allows the government to set up rescue centres for injured, seized, confiscated, abandoned or donated wild animals and to issue guidelines for releasing them into the wild. The Mirsarai cases were of this kind: the snakes were freed from the nets and released in the forest, with Forest Department range staff and the volunteer rescuers working together.

Pythons are not venomous, but the same report recorded the toll of venomous snakes in the upazila. According to the Mirsarai Upazila Health Complex, nearly 400 people in the upazila's 16 unions and two municipalities had been bitten by snakes in the first ten months of 2024. The most recent death was that of a class seven student from Zorarganj union.

Nationally, the National Survey on Annual Incidence and Epidemiology of Snakebite in Bangladesh, carried out by the National Centre for Disease Control under the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) and published on 18 June 2023, estimated that about 403,000 people were bitten by snakes each year in 2021-22, and that 7,511 of them died. Dr Robed Amin, line director of the DGHS non-communicable disease control programme, told The Business Standard in August 2023 that the survey was done on a cluster basis covering both rural and urban areas. In 2020 the health department had put the figure at about 600,000 bites and 6,000 deaths a year.

Bangladesh has about 100 species of snake, 37 of them venomous, according to the national guideline for snakebite management as cited in the same report: 16 sea snakes, 3 cobras, 5 kraits, 2 coral snakes, 6 green pit vipers and one true viper, Russell's viper. Chattogram Medical College Hospital treated 755 snakebite patients in 2020, 864 in 2021 and 1,457 in 2022, and 612 in the first half of 2023.

The World Health Organization, in its snakebite fact sheet as it stood in 2024, estimated that about 5.4 million people worldwide are bitten by snakes each year, with 1.8 to 2.7 million cases of envenoming, and that between 81,410 and 137,880 people die of snakebite each year, with around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities. Agricultural workers and children are the most affected, it says. High-quality antivenoms are the most effective treatment and are on the WHO List of Essential Medicines. WHO listed snakebite envenoming as a highest-priority neglected tropical disease in June 2017, and its strategy aims to halve deaths and disability from snakebite by 2030.

The Mirsarai report came a few months after a nationwide scare over Russell's viper. In June 2024 Prothom Alo reported that fear of the snake had led to the killing of many snakes, including non-venomous ones, and that a python had been beaten to death in Chattogram. The chief conservator of forests, Md Amir Hossain Chowdhury, told the paper that any snake people saw was being killed, and that this was upsetting the balance of nature; snakes eat rats, he said. Professor Farid Ahsan of the University of Chittagong's zoology department said that whatever snake had bitten a person, the patient had to be taken to hospital quickly, and called the killing of every snake found very alarming. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued a statement calling the killing of snakes a punishable offence and asking people not to do it.

On 6 July 2024 Independent Television reported that a python of about 10 feet had come down from the forest with heavy rain and hill floods into Doctor Para in Charia Muradpur, Mirzapur union, Hathazari, also in Chattogram district. Residents took it for a Russell's viper and some tried to kill it with sticks. A team from the Wildlife and Snake Rescue group retrieved it from a tree branch and released it in a local forest with help from the Forest Department. Professor Aniruddha Ghosh, a snake researcher at Chattogram Medical College Hospital, told the channel that people who see a Russell's viper or any other snake should not kill it but should call a rescue team, and that a person bitten by a snake should be taken quickly to a medical facility.

The python cases in Mirsarai involved no bites, but the upazila's snakebite figures make the official advice relevant to the farmers whose fields border the hills. The WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia's Guidelines for the Management of Snakebites (second edition, 2016) say most bites are on the lower legs, ankles and feet of agricultural workers and their families, and recommend the following to reduce the risk:

• Know the local snakes, where they live and the times of day and seasons when they are most active, and be especially careful after rain, during floods, at harvest time and at night.
• Never handle, threaten or attack a snake, and never try to trap or corner one; give it every chance to escape.
• Do not keep livestock, especially chickens, inside the house, and store food in rodent-proof containers, because rodents and poultry attract snakes.
• Sleep under a well-tucked-in mosquito net, ideally on a raised bed.
• Clear rubbish, termite mounds and undergrowth from around the house, and keep grass short.
• Use a light and prod the ground ahead with a stick when walking outside at night; wear proper shoes or boots and long trousers in the dark or in undergrowth.

For first aid, the same guidelines say most traditional methods do more harm than good: cutting or pricking the bite, sucking out venom, snake stones, tight tourniquets, electric shocks and applying chemicals, herbs or ice should all be avoided, and herbal treatment must never delay medical care. The recommended steps are:

• Reassure the person who has been bitten; about half of venomous bites inject no venom, and severe envenoming usually develops slowly enough to allow treatment.
• Lay the person down in a comfortable, safe position, ideally on the left side in case of vomiting, and keep the bitten limb still with a splint or sling, since any movement spreads the venom.
• Do not interfere with the wound by cutting, rubbing, vigorous cleaning, massage or applying herbs or chemicals.
• Take the person to a hospital or clinic as quickly, safely and comfortably as possible.
• Do not try to kill the snake; if it is already dead, take it along for identification without touching it with bare hands, or take close-up photographs.

Photo: TimVickers / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Sources: Jagonews24, The Daily Star, Banglapedia (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh), Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2012 (Bangladesh Laws, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division), World Health Organization (WHO) and WHO Regional Office for South-East Asia, The Business Standard, Prothom Alo, Independent Television, Wikipedia