Tree theft has become a routine event in the reserved forest of Ghatail upazila in Tangail. Alongside it run illegal occupation, indiscriminate hill cutting, more than two hundred sawmills operating inside the forest, black smoke from brick kilns and waste from poultry farms. Together they have pushed this large block of forest into a fight for survival.
Local forest department figures put the forest area in Ghatail upazila at 25,711 acres. Sal and gajari trees give the forest its character.
The complaint is that sal, gajari and other native trees are being felled and foreign species planted in their place. A natural sal forest regenerates from the stumps of felled trees, but thieves are digging out the root stock as well, so that regrowth is being cut off too.
The report cites a forest plot at plot number 2016 in Gourishwar mouza of Sandhanpur union, where a gang took away sixteen akashmoni trees.
The sawmills running inside and along the edge of the forest have become an easy destination for stolen timber. Brick kiln smoke and poultry farm waste nearby add to the pressure on soil and water.
The loss is not only a count of trees. As the sal forest thins, soil moisture, the groundwater table and the environment of neighbouring farmland all come under strain, and the cost of that falls on the farming families living along the forest edge.
Reported by the Tangail correspondent of Krishi Shomoy.
Source: Krishi Shomoy
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