Resorts and cottages are going up one after another in Moulvibazar on land cut from hills, hillocks and forest. Their number has grown to about 200 in recent years, but government offices have no clear information on whether most of them are approved or legal, Samakal's Moulvibazar and Kamalganj correspondents report.
Hillocks are being levelled, cottages built deep inside forest and trees cleared for roads, shrinking wildlife habitat and movement corridors. Lawachara National Park, declared in 1996 over 1,250 hectares of reserved forest in Kamalganj, is one of the country's main evergreen forests. After Moulvibazar was declared a tourist district in 2008, the first five-star resort opened on 13 acres in Sreemangal in 2013; Sreemangal now has more than 100 resorts, 40 to 45 of them in the town's Radhanagar area alone.
Swapan Deb Sajal, director of the Bangladesh Wildlife Service Foundation, and environmental activist Rajdeep Deb said a significant number of snakes and other animals came out of Lawachara into villages in August and September. Pythons, monocled cobras, eyed cat snakes, green pit vipers, palm civets, monkeys and fishing cats were rescued and handed to the forest department. In their view, cutting of hills and forest and more people in the animals' habitat mean the forest no longer feels safe to them.
A S M Saleh Sohel, a former member of the national council of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA), said powerful artificial lights at resorts near wildlife habitat spread far and disrupt the animals' lives, and that things might be different if there were 10 to 20 resorts rather than about 200. Large companies, wealthy people, officials and celebrities are investing in the resorts, some openly and some under other names, the report says, and many run a resort on land of only two or three decimals.
Resorts with 20 or more rooms need clearance from the Department of Environment; smaller ones do not. Sreemangal upazila nirbahi officer Md Ziaur Rahman said the administration investigates complaints of hill cutting, is building a full database of hotels and resorts with their land ownership, approvals and licences, does not allow hillock land to be reclassified without approval, and recently shut two establishments for breaking the rules.
Photo: Nasir Khan Saikat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Source: Samakal
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