About 50 monitor lizards roam Sadarpur market in Faridpur, living alongside people

About fifty large monitor lizards were living along the bank of a canal beside the upazila headquarters market in Sadarpur, Faridpur district, in April 2026, moving openly through the market, rubbish heaps, bushes and even household yards, Jago News reported on 22 April 2026. Traders and residents said the animals, which live on the market's waste, had harmed no one in the years they had been there, and many people had come to regard them almost as friends. The upazila livestock officer, the Forest Department's office in Faridpur and the upazila administration all spoke about protecting them.

RTV, which visited the canal bank on the morning of Monday 20 April and published its report on 21 April, described the lizards as having become an inseparable part of the market. The two reports differ on how many there are: residents and the upazila livestock officer quoted by Jago News put the group at about 50 to 60, while RTV wrote that more than 200 monitor lizards lived in the area. No count by a wildlife survey was reported.

According to Jago News, the large lizards had been roaming in groups along the bank of the canal next to the upazila sadar bazar for about two 'jug', some 24 years. At first only two to four were seen, but as they bred their number grew to about 50 to 60. Residents estimated that each weighed around 30 to 40 kilograms; nobody was reported to have weighed one.

Their food is what the market and the houses around it throw away: rotten fish, dead chickens, and the bones and offal of slaughtered cattle and goats. RTV's reporter saw the same, writing that discarded rotten fish, dead chickens and the bones and entrails of slaughtered cattle from the market shops were their main food. In eating this refuse, residents said, the lizards help keep the market and the yards clean.

People in the area said the animals eat only refuse and rotting food and do not take householders' ducks, chickens or anything else, even when poultry walk in front of them. Locals give them food when they see them. Sadarpur's upazila livestock officer, Sabyasachi Majumder, told Jago News that the lizards are seen moving in groups of eight to ten, that they stay because there is enough food for them, and that people feeding them has built a kind of friendship.

Chandan, a sweeper at the market, told Jago News: "I sweep the rubbish of the market clean. The monitor lizards eat the rubbish and cut my work a lot."

Mizan Howlader, a trader at the market, said nobody knew where or how the lizards had come. They do no harm to people, he said, and instead help clear the rubbish that piles up in the market, so no one drives them away; people rather help them live safely. "A stranger would be scared when he sees them. We were scared at first too, but now nobody is," he said. Everyone thinks of them as helpful friends, many people feed them, and they wander everywhere in their own way.

Another trader, Jinnat Ali Khan, said that by the look of them each one weighed one to one and a half maunds, depending on size. They roam the market, the bushes and the open ground, and sometimes come into the yards of nearby houses. "But they are completely harmless. So far I have not heard of them biting or harming anyone," he said. Because of this they cause little fear, and local people have accepted their presence as normal.

Local resident Md Nurul Islam told Jago News that two or three monitor lizards were first seen about 24 years ago and that there were now about 50 to 60, huge in size and, by his estimate, 30 to 40 kilograms each. They eat refuse, the rotten food people throw away, and do not touch the ducks and chickens that walk past them, which, he said, is why a friendly relationship has grown between them and the people. He described the animals as nearly extinct and asked the administration and others concerned to let them roam freely and to conserve them, "otherwise these animals will be lost one day."

RTV, quoting traders and residents without naming them, reported the same picture: the lizards do people no harm, help clear the market's rubbish, are no longer chased away, and sometimes walk into nearby yards without frightening anyone, so that the community has come to accept them as a normal part of life.

Moniruzzaman Monir, general secretary of the Faridpur Environment Development Forum, told Jago News that monitor lizards are not harmful to people and help keep the environment in balance. He said they had become scarce, that the presence of such animals is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, and that protecting these lizards and their habitat was very urgent.

Sabyasachi Majumder, the upazila livestock officer, said the lizards have no venom like snakes. Because they carry bacteria on their bodies, however, a bite or a blow from the tail could cause an infection where it lands. He said monitor lizards are called the farmer's friend because they eat rats in paddy fields and insects that damage crops, and that they swim very well, which is why their homes are mostly found near wetlands. "If they have any problem we can give them treatment, but conservation is the responsibility of the Forest Department," he said.

Tawhid Hossain, assistant conservator of forests in Faridpur (additional charge), told Jago News that he had learned of the matter and would visit the site that day. After that, he said, a written proposal on how the animals could be conserved would be sent to higher authorities. Sadarpur's upazila nirbahi officer (UNO), Md Sharif Shawon, said care would be taken so that the animals could live in their own way and nobody could harm them.

In RTV's report, Zohra Mila, the Bangladesh Forest Department's wildlife and biodiversity conservation officer, praised the people of Sadarpur for befriending a useful animal. She said monitor lizards are calm animals that usually live in holes in the ground, tree hollows, cracks in old walls or abandoned brick kilns; that they are active by day and rest at night; and that they eat venomous snakes and their eggs, dead fish, frogs, crabs, snails and rotting animals. They climb trees quickly and swim very well, she said, which is why they are mostly found near wetlands. In her view, fewer monitor lizards would mean more crop pests, more rats and more venomous snakes, and less clearing of carcasses that could otherwise spread germs. She added that the IUCN lists the ramgadi, or black monitor, as vulnerable.

Banglapedia, the national encyclopedia of Bangladesh, records 18 lizard species in the country in four families, of which the monitors form the family Varanidae. Monitors are large, dry-skinned reptiles with sharp-clawed five-toed limbs, a long and unusually flexible neck, a tail that does not break off, and a long, slender tongue forked at the tip. They are mostly ground-living and active by day, climb well, and some are semi-aquatic and good swimmers. They live mostly in earth holes, termite mounds, tree holes and crevices, and feed on live animals and on carcasses.

Bangladesh has three species. Because they are hard to tell apart, people often call all of them guishap, and local names such as tarbel, guil and ghorel are also used, Jago News noted. The Red List of Bangladesh published by IUCN Bangladesh in 2015, whose reptile assessments were led by zoologist Md Farid Ahsan, describes each of them:

• Bengal monitor (Varanus bengalensis), locally gui shap, Bangla gui shap or guil: the most widely distributed monitor in the country, found throughout Bangladesh including the coastal islands, from the backyards of houses to crop fields and forests of all types. It walks, runs, swims and climbs well, and eats everything from invertebrates to mammals, including carrion. The Red List notes that in villages it regularly kills and eats poultry and duck chicks. Females lay 10 to 32 eggs, 21 on average, between August and October.
• Water monitor (Varanus salvator), locally kalo gui or ramgadi: the subspecies V. s. macromaculatus occurs in Bangladesh. It is common in the mangrove and coastal areas of Chattogram, Khulna and Barishal divisions and rare elsewhere. It lives in burrows near riverbanks and the edges of water bodies, eats almost anything it can swallow and is fond of carrion, with a diet that even includes rubbish. It breeds from April to October and can lay up to 40 eggs a year in two or more clutches.
• Yellow monitor (Varanus flavescens), locally sona gui or haldey gui: found in almost every part of the country except the deep forests and the coast, partial to countryside and crop fields. It is a burrow dweller, a good swimmer and a poor climber; in the monsoon it is seen more often in water, and many are found along highways when the countryside floods. Almost the entire population hibernates in winter.

On size, the Bengal monitor can reach about 175 centimetres including the tail, and heavy individuals weigh nearly 7.2 kilograms. The yellow monitor is smaller, 45 to 95 centimetres long and up to about 1.45 kilograms. The Asian water monitor is widely considered the second-largest lizard in the world after the Komodo dragon: adults rarely exceed 1.5 to 2 metres, though the largest on record, from Sri Lanka, measured 3.21 metres, and a common mature weight is about 19.5 kilograms. The Forest Department's Zohra Mila told RTV that the ramgadi can be 7 to 9 feet long and weigh more than 25 kilograms, while Jago News, citing the livestock department, gave 8 to 9 feet and about one maund.

Residents and the environment forum in Sadarpur described the lizards as nearly extinct. The official national assessment is more measured, but all three species are in decline. In the 2015 Red List of Bangladesh, assessed in October 2014, the Bengal monitor and the yellow monitor are listed as Near Threatened and the water monitor as Vulnerable. The population trend for all three is given as decreasing.

For the Bengal monitor, the assessors wrote that threats had already wiped it out in some parts of its range in the country, that growing human population pressure and development were likely to become more severe, and that hunting was known in some areas. The Red List also records that the population had recovered from the large-scale foreign trade of the 1970s and 1980s after a blanket ban on its use. For the water monitor, the justification for Vulnerable is that its habitat is shrinking through human activity and development and its population is decreasing. For the yellow monitor, the assessors pointed to sparse distribution, hunting in some areas and a shrinking range.

The 2015 categories are less severe than those of IUCN Bangladesh's previous national list, published in 2000, in which the Bengal monitor was Vulnerable and both the yellow and the water monitor were Endangered. In the 2015 Red List's own summary table, the global status of the water monitor is given as Least Concern, which is why Bangladeshi and international assessments of the same animal can differ.

The Red List also observes that household areas, and even houses, support some wildlife in Bangladesh, especially wall lizards, geckos, monitor lizards and some snakes. A group of monitors living off a market's waste, as in Sadarpur, fits that picture of animals that have learned to share space with people.

When the Sadarpur reports appeared, the law protecting these animals was the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2026, Act No. 86 of 2026, dated 10 April 2026. The Act states that it is deemed to have taken effect on 7 January 2026, and it replaced the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2012. RTV's report cited the 2012 Act; by then that law had been repealed.

All three monitor lizards appear in Schedule 1(B) of the 2026 Act, the list of protected wildlife: the Bengal monitor as guishap, the yellow monitor as sona gui, and the water monitor as kalo gui or ramgadi. The schedule's heading says the wildlife listed there may not, in any circumstance, be hunted, collected, transported, bought, sold, imported or exported without a licence or possession certificate, except for research or scientific need.

Section 41(3) of the Act says no one may hunt wildlife listed in Schedule 1(B). The Act's definition of hunting is wide: it covers killing, capturing or poisoning a wild animal or any similar attempt, chasing it for such a purpose, injuring or harming it, taking any part of it, and collecting or destroying the nests or eggs of wild birds or reptiles. Under Section 44, hunting a Schedule 1(B) animal is punishable by up to three years in prison, a fine of up to Tk 3 lakh, or both; a repeat offence carries up to five years, up to Tk 5 lakh, or both. Collecting, possessing, buying or selling the meat, trophies or body parts of these animals without a permit, under Section 41(5), carries up to one year or up to Tk 1 lakh, or both, and up to two years or Tk 2 lakh for a repeat offence.

Section 10 adds general rules that apply to all wild animals. No one may rear or keep a wild animal captive without a licence, possession certificate or permit; wildlife may not be bought or sold through social media advertisements, at haats and bazars or by any other means; all wild animals, their body parts and meat are treated as government property; and cruelty to wildlife is an offence. The Act's explanation of cruelty includes beating, teasing, intimidating or needlessly confining a wild animal, and publishing cruelty to wildlife on social media. Under Section 11, the Chief Wildlife Warden, in consultation with a scientific committee, decides which scheduled species are threatened, near threatened or of least concern.

Sadarpur is one of the upazilas of Faridpur district in Dhaka division. According to Banglapedia, it covers 261.29 square kilometres and is bounded by Char Bhadrasan and Dohar upazilas to the north, Bhanga to the south, Shibchar and Sreenagar to the east and Nagarkanda to the west. Its main rivers are the Padma, the Arial Khan and the Bhubaneshwar. Sadarpur thana was formed in 1863 and became an upazila in 1984.

The 2011 population census counted 186,254 people in the upazila, in nine unions. Agriculture is the main source of income for 67.79 percent of households, and the main crops are paddy, jute, oilseeds, pulses and vegetables. Banglapedia lists 16 hats and bazars and three fairs in the upazila, the best known being Krishnapur Hat, Piajkhali Hat, Sare Satara Rashi Hat and Choudha Rashi Hat, and among its old landmarks the residence of the Baishrashi zamindars.

Faridpur district as a whole covers 2,052.86 square kilometres and lies on the Padma, the Old Kumar, the Arial Khan and the Gorai, with notable beels such as Dhol Samudra, Ramkeli, Ghoradar and Shakuner beel. It is a farming district, with agriculture the main source of income for 58.60 percent of households. Rivers, canals, beels and paddy fields of this kind are the wetland and farmland habitats in which Bangladesh's monitor lizards live, and which the livestock officer linked to their role in eating rats and crop pests.

Monitor lizards are usually wary of people. Bengal monitors are generally solitary and shy, avoid humans and can detect human movement from a long way off, and while a few individuals may bite when caught, they rarely do so. The Sadarpur lizards, by the reporters' and residents' accounts, behave differently: they walk through a busy market and into yards among people who neither chase nor hunt them, and where food is plentiful.

The water monitor in particular adapts well to places shaped by people. It has been recorded thriving in agricultural areas and in cities with canal systems, such as in Sri Lanka, where it is not hunted or persecuted, and it eats food scraps and carcasses in urban areas. Like the Komodo dragon, it often eats carrion, and by eating decaying flesh it removes infectious material from the environment. In Bangkok's Lumphini Park, about 400 Asian water monitors live in the middle of the city, and in 2016 a programme captured and moved a number of them to control their numbers.

Elsewhere in Bangladesh, people are more often a danger to monitor lizards than hosts. Banglapedia notes that some communities eat monitor meat, and the 2015 Red List records that hunting of the Bengal and yellow monitors is known in some areas, especially where tribal communities live, while development and a growing human population squeeze their range.

Photo: Fabian Roudra Baroi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, RTV Online, Banglapedia (Asiatic Society of Bangladesh), IUCN Bangladesh Red List of Bangladesh Volume 4: Reptiles and Amphibians (2015), Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2026 (Laws of Bangladesh, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division), Wikipedia