In the Khojar Khala area of Sylhet, a man tied up an endangered waterhen (dahuk) to sell it. The bird kept pecking at the rope, trying to free itself. The scene was witnessed by Prietenia Pia, a law student at Sylhet Metropolitan University.

Telling the hunter that it was wrong to keep a bird tied up like that, she asked him to let the waterhen go. The hunter refused to release it. Pia then bought the bird for Tk 600.

After buying the bird on Monday (4 October), she contacted Abdul Karim Kim, general secretary of Bangladesh Poribesh Andolon (BAPA) in Sylhet, to have it released. On hearing the news, environmental organiser Abdul Karim Kim and journalist leaders Chhamir Mahmud and Mithu Das Joy went to the spot and released the bird into a wetland in the Khojarkhola area.

University student Prietenia Pia said that if school and college syllabuses mentioned that hunting and eating birds is a punishable offence, and explained the benefits of birds, the new generation would grow to love them. Then no one would dare to hunt birds and keep them tied up in front of a shop like this.

BAPA Sylhet general secretary Abdul Karim Kim said that anyone who sees birds being sold like this only needs to inform them, and arrangements will be made to recover and release the birds through the law enforcement agencies. There will be no need to buy birds with money like this. "We will bring the hunter to book through the forest department," he said.

District press club general secretary Chhamir Mahmud told Jago News that if the new generation, like Pia, shows love for the environment, nature and birds, it will protect the country's animals and birds as well as its biodiversity. It will also protect us from the various natural disasters caused by climate change, he said, so we can follow Pia's example in protecting the environment and biodiversity.

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