The boundary of the Forest Department's reserved forest at Purbachal will be marked as quickly as possible, said Syeda Rizwana Hasan, adviser to the Ministry of Water Resources and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

She said this in reply to journalists' questions while visiting the reserved forest at Purbachal in Dhaka on Tuesday (10 June).

"There is a fairly healthy forest here at Purbachal. Marking its boundary is now urgent, and it will be done soon. This could be a forest that Dhaka residents feel is close to them, where they can come and see it," she said.

The adviser said the sal forest had been in decline because of wrong afforestation policy, urbanisation and industrialisation. "RAJUK had included this forest inside the second phase of Purbachal, but with a great deal of effort and a legal fight we managed to save this forest, which will be about 144 acres," she said.

"We will try to bring the forest back mainly with sal saplings. The geological character of this area is that of a garh (upland) area," she said.

Rizwana Hasan said that where there is empty space, they would try to let the sal forest return naturally. To stop the empty spaces being encroached upon, some sal saplings will also be planted there in a natural setting.

The area was already formally designated as forest, and it has now also been declared a special biodiversity area, the adviser said.

She said no one other than traditional forest dwellers may live on forest land, so illegal occupiers of this forest land must leave quickly.

Present were Md Chhanaullya Patwary, conservator of forests of the wildlife and nature conservation circle; wildlife expert Dr Mohammad Ali Reza Khan; Hossain Muhammad Nishad, conservator of forests of the social forestry circle, Dhaka; Sharmin Akter, Dhaka divisional officer of the wildlife management and nature conservation division; and other senior Forest Department officials.

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