Teknaf wall in elephant corridor lacks its permission, Forest Department says

In June 2026 a brick boundary wall being built in the reserved forest behind the No. 26 Shalbagan Rohingya camp, in Hnila union of Teknaf upazila in Cox's Bazar, drew objections from local people. The wall was 5 metres high and 137 metres long. Residents and environmental activists said the site is a habitat for wild elephants and other wildlife and a corridor that wild elephants use to move through the forest. The Daily Ittefaq reported on it on 21 June and Jagonews24 on 23 June.

According to both reports, a contracting firm was carrying out the work through the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as part of building a waste-management centre for the Rohingya camps. Ittefaq, citing local sources, said construction inside the forest had been going on for about two months. The divisional forest officer of the Cox's Bazar South Forest Division said no permission had been taken from the Forest Department for the work. The Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner in Cox's Bazar said the project was being carried out to ensure modern management of the camps' waste.

Local people alleged that building the wall was stripping trees from the forest land and upsetting the natural balance. They said the habitats of many wild animals, including wild elephants, monkeys, jackals, reptiles and various birds, were being damaged. Because the site is an important corridor for wild elephants, they feared the wall would block the animals' normal movement, which could push more elephants into settlements and raise the risk of human-elephant conflict. They also feared that permanent structures in the forest could add to deforestation and loss of biodiversity and increase the risk of criminal activity.

Local environmental activist Mohammad Toyeb Ullah told Jagonews24: "Shalbagan forest is one of the most important forests in the Ukhiya-Teknaf region and has long been known as a safe habitat for wild elephants and other wildlife. It has also been used as an important elephant corridor. But building a brick boundary wall inside the forest is seriously disrupting the natural environment, biodiversity and the normal movement of wildlife."

He added that the wall would further narrow the elephants' path, which could bring more elephants into settlements and raise the risk of human-elephant conflict. In his view, with trees and natural vegetation being destroyed, the habitats of animals large and small were under threat, and permanent structures of this kind were a major threat to the ecological balance of the reserved forest.

Another local resident, Mohammad Anwar Hossain, said that since the Rohingya took shelter in the country, many places had been damaged, including hills, forest land, ordinary people's farmland and wildlife sanctuaries. He told Ittefaq that, in his view, building another waste-management centre for the Rohingya camps' waste would destroy the forest and its animals and close off the elephants' corridor.

Abdullah Al Mamun, divisional forest officer of the Cox's Bazar South Forest Division, told Jagonews24: "A contractor is building the boundary wall on behalf of UNDP in the forest land next to Shalbagan camp 26 in Teknaf. But no permission of any kind has been taken from the Forest Department for this work."

Speaking to Ittefaq, the same officer explained that because the area falls within the camp area, permission had been given by the office of the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner. The Forest Department had written to that office asking for the work to be stopped, he said, but construction was continuing. He described the forest as an important corridor for wild elephants and other wildlife and said a permanent boundary wall there would seriously harm the forest environment and the normal movement and habitat of wild animals.

Mohammad Mizanur Rahman, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner (RRRC) in Cox's Bazar, said a huge amount of waste is generated in the Rohingya camps every day and that without proper management pollution could get worse. The project, he said, was being carried out to ensure modern waste management. He acknowledged, however, that building a wall inside the forest was not an ideal solution, adding that a lack of proper waste management was also harmful to the environment.

Neither report carried a response from UNDP or from the contracting firm doing the work, and neither mentioned any official inquiry or decision on the wall.

Teknaf is an upazila of Cox's Bazar district and the southernmost part of mainland Bangladesh. The Naf River forms its eastern boundary, with the Myanmar town of Maungdaw on the far bank. According to Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics figures cited by Wikipedia, the upazila covers 388.66 square kilometres and had a population of 333,865 in the 2022 census. It consists of Teknaf municipality and six unions: Baharchhara, Hnila, Sabrang, Saint Martin, Teknaf Sadar and Whykong. The Shalbagan Rohingya camp lies in Hnila union.

Much of the hill forest on the Teknaf peninsula forms the Teknaf Wildlife Sanctuary, an area of 11,615 hectares bordered by the Naf River to the east and the Bay of Bengal to the west. It was declared a game reserve in 1983 under the Bangladesh Wildlife (Preservation) (Amendment) Act, 1974, and was once known as the Teknaf Game Reserve. The sanctuary spreads across five unions of the upazila: Baharchhara, Hnila, Sabrang, Teknaf Sadar and Whykong. Citing older Forest Department eco-tourism material, Wikipedia describes it as one of the few places in Bangladesh where Asian elephants can be seen in the wild. Kudum Cave, Nitong Hill and Kuthi Hill are among its known sites.

Both June reports called the wall site a reserved forest; neither said whether it lies inside the sanctuary's boundary. Ittefaq, citing local sources, described the Shalbagan forest as one known as a wildlife sanctuary.

The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) is the largest land animal in Asia. It has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List since 1986, because its population has fallen by at least 50 per cent over the last three elephant generations, about 60 to 75 years. Its main threats are loss, degradation and fragmentation of habitat, and poaching. A Mongabay report in May 2026 put the wild population at about 52,000, living in 13 countries.

In Bangladesh the IUCN has declared the species critically endangered. An IUCN Bangladesh survey published in 2016 found only 268 resident elephants in the country, all in the forests of the southeast. Mongabay reported that this last count was carried out between 2013 and 2016; in May 2026 A.S.M. Jahir Uddin Akon, the conservator of forests who leads the Forest Department's elephant conservation project, said the current number was not known and that a new census was planned.

Elephants need a great deal of food and water. According to a 2022 Mongabay report, an Asian elephant generally eats more than 150 kilograms of vegetation and drinks about 140 litres of water a day. Cows and calves move together in groups, while bulls leave their mothers on reaching adolescence. Gestation lasts 18 to 22 months, usually producing a single calf, and births are typically four to five years apart, so a population that falls takes a long time to recover.

Elephants do not stay in one place. They move between patches of habitat along forested routes known as corridors, and any obstacle on the way, such as farms, settlements or structures, brings them into conflict with people, putting both at risk. In its 2016 survey the IUCN identified 12 elephant corridors in Bangladesh. Mongabay reported in 2022, citing officials, that one of these had since been lost to the construction of the Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar, and that the Forest Department had asked the environment ministry to give the remaining 11 corridors official recognition through a gazette notice.

In the same report Ishtiaq Uddin Ahmad, a former chief conservator of forests and former IUCN country representative in Bangladesh, asked how elephants would move if concrete structures were built in forests and elephant corridors. Elephants never live in one place but move along corridors, he said, and their movement must be kept free from disruption.

Large numbers of Rohingya fled to Cox's Bazar after violence in Myanmar on 25 August 2017. On 4 February 2025 Prothom Alo reported, citing the Forest Department, that 34 refugee camps had been set up on 7,000 acres of forest land in Ukhiya and Teknaf. As a result, five elephant corridors and more than 15 water reservoirs had been completely blocked, and more than 60 elephants in the area faced severe shortages of food and water. Forest officials said a further 1,837 acres of forest had been destroyed to meet the demand for fuel.

According to that report, the Forest Department counts eight elephant corridors in Cox's Bazar, five of them in Ukhiya and Teknaf. Three corridors at Kutupalong in Ukhiya had been blocked for seven years by the camps, and two at the Ghumdhum border had been closed after Myanmar built a barbed-wire fence. Md. Monirul Islam, assistant conservator of forests for the Teknaf-Ukhiya circle of the Cox's Bazar South Forest Division, said there were 203 elephants in Cox's Bazar, including 25 calves, of which 37 lived in the forests of Teknaf and 30 in those of Ukhiya. Because of the camps, he said, elephants in Teknaf could not move towards Ukhiya, nor those in Ukhiya towards Teknaf.

In the same report the additional Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, Muhammad Shamsuddouja, said the Asian elephant population in the Ukhiya-Teknaf forests was in a critical condition because of the camps, but that alternative paths had been created outside the camps for elephants and various steps taken to reduce human-elephant conflict. Citing IUCN and Forest Department officials, the report said 23 people, 12 of them Rohingya refugees, were killed by elephants between August 2017 and February 2018, and 375 incursions by elephants into areas around the camps were recorded in that period.

In March 2018 the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and the IUCN launched an action plan to prevent further deaths from elephant attacks at the Kutupalong camp. The Financial Express reported that at least 10 refugees, including young children, had been killed in such incidents by then. The plan provided for watch-towers at key lookout points, an Elephant Response Team to raise the alarm when elephants entered the camp, marked elephant routes and corridors so that refugees knew which areas to avoid, and an awareness campaign.

Teknaf has seen deaths too. On 10 July 2020 Bangla Tribune reported that a Rohingya woman had been killed by a wild elephant in the hills next to the Leda Rohingya camp, and that, according to law enforcers, more than 22 people, 14 of them Rohingya, had been killed in elephant attacks over the previous three years. Syed Ashik Ahmed, the Forest Department's Teknaf range officer, said then that trees on the hills had been cut to build shelters, and that elephant herds short of habitat and food were entering settlements.

Conflict between people and elephants has grown beyond Cox's Bazar as well. On 7 May 2026 Mongabay reported, citing the Forest Department's latest data, that at least 148 elephants, resident, non-resident and captive, were killed in Bangladesh between 2017 and 2025, and that three deaths in 2026 brought the total to 151. Researchers pointed to unplanned public and private infrastructure in the southeast and border fencing in the northeast. For example, 27 kilometres of the 103-kilometre Chattogram-Cox's Bazar railway run through three protected areas, Chunati and Fasiakhali wildlife sanctuaries and Medhakachhapia National Park, where almost half of the country's resident elephants live.

Prothom Alo's 2025 report said seven elephants had died in the previous year, two in Teknaf, three in Ramu and two in Eidgaon and Chakaria, from electric-wire traps set by people, gunfire, accidents and disease. Forest Department records showed 135 people killed by elephants over the previous six years, while not one of the 16 cases filed over elephant killings had been resolved. The Cox's Bazar North Forest Division said it had removed 52 electric-wire traps, each about a kilometre long, over three years.

For conservation, the government drew up a ten-year elephant conservation action plan in 2018. Under the Sustainable Forests and Livelihoods (SUFAL) project, the Forest Department and organisations including IUCN Bangladesh formed Elephant Response Teams of local people in conflict-prone areas. Compensation for victims of wildlife attacks was introduced in 2010 and raised in 2021: 300,000 taka instead of 100,000 for the family of a person killed, 100,000 taka instead of 50,000 for an injured person, and up to 50,000 taka for damaged household goods and crops. Monirul H. Khan, a zoology professor at Jahangirnagar University, told Mongabay that the response teams were too few and that their members were unpaid volunteers, which made the effort less effective.

What may not be done in a reserved forest is set out in section 26 of the Forest Act, 1927, as amended in 1990 and 2000. According to the amended text held in the legal library of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the following are offences in a reserved forest:

• felling, girdling, lopping, tapping or burning any tree, stripping off its bark or leaves, or otherwise damaging it;
• clearing or breaking up any land for cultivation or any other purpose;
• removing timber from a reserved forest, or making a fresh clearing prohibited by section 5.

These carry imprisonment of six months to five years and a fine of 5,000 to 50,000 taka, and the court may also order compensation for damage to the forest. The same section says that nothing in it prohibits an act done with the written permission of the Forest Officer or under rules made by the government, which is why the Forest Department's permission matters for work in a reserved forest. The June reports cited no ruling by a court or authority on whether the Shalbagan wall broke the law.

The legal framework for wildlife had changed shortly before. Prothom Alo reported in December 2025 that the interim government's advisory council had approved the Wildlife Conservation and Security Ordinance in place of the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2012; bdnews24 reported that the ordinance was issued in January 2026, and The Business Standard reported on 14 April 2026 that it had been passed by parliament as the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act, 2026. According to Prothom Alo, the new framework lists tigers and elephants in Schedule 1(a), and Section 46 of the ordinance makes killing any animal in Schedule 1(a) or 1(b) a cognisable and non-bailable offence, so forest officials and law enforcers can arrest suspects without a warrant.

The waste problem the wall was meant to address was not new. On 16 October 2018 Prothom Alo reported that UNDP, with the government of Sweden, had begun a three-year, 4.8-million-dollar project titled 'Sustainable solutions to solid waste: A local response to the Rohingya crisis' to introduce a sustainable solid-waste system in Cox's Bazar. Speakers at its inception meeting said the population of Ukhiya and Teknaf had risen to more than 1.5 million because of the Rohingya influx and that this dense population generated 10,000 tonnes of waste a month. The then refugee commissioner, Mohammad Abul Kalam, said solid-waste management had become an urgent need in Cox's Bazar given the pressure of over-population and the huge volume of waste produced every day.

According to a 2025 UNDP Bangladesh report, UNDP set up the first sanitary landfill in the camps, in Camp 20 Extension, in 2018. With a capacity of 40,000 cubic metres, it can hold up to 12,470 tons of waste, and it processes 12 to 15 tons of waste a day from 33 camps. BRAC is a partner in running it. As the first landfill neared capacity, UNDP was building a second one next to it with a capacity of 60,000 cubic metres, and was exploring closed incineration and recycling to deal with polythene. The project gives daily work to more than 45 Rohingya.

The June 2026 reports described the Shalbagan wall as part of a waste-management centre in Teknaf. The dispute therefore set two needs against each other: handling the camps' waste, which the refugee commissioner called urgent, and protecting a reserved forest and elephant route, which is the Forest Department's responsibility and for which, its divisional forest officer said, the department's permission had not been sought.

Photo: Masum-al-Hasan Rocky / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, The Daily Ittefaq, Prothom Alo, Mongabay, Bangla Tribune, The Financial Express, UNDP Bangladesh, UNODC (Forest Act, 1927), Wikipedia, bdnews24, The Business Standard