A recent study at Inani National Park, a short distance from Cox's Bazar town, has recorded 23 species of mammal, including critically threatened animals such as the clouded leopard and the hoolock gibbon.

The tropical forest, formed where coastal and hill woodland meet, was formally declared a national park by the government in 2019. Its 7,085 hectares are regarded as important for the biodiversity of south-eastern Bangladesh, yet despite protected status there had been little significant research on the state of its ecosystem.

The study was carried out by Bipul Krishna Das, director of the Wildlife Centre of the Bangladesh Forest Department. He divided the park into 11 zones and used camera traps, line transects and indirect signs or spotting. Cameras were placed at 32 locations in the forest.

The species recorded include the clouded leopard, the hoolock gibbon and the Asian elephant, all of them threatened mammals.

Listing animals was not the only aim. Mr Das says he tried to assess the condition of the whole ecosystem — trees and the surrounding settlements as well as mammals. Human activity, he says, is having a major effect on global biodiversity all the time.

Knowing what animals and trees a forest holds, and how its ecosystem is surviving, matters because the persistence of biodiversity depends on it. The farming and livelihoods of the settlements around the forest are bound up with the same ecosystem.

The study also points to gaps in conservation. Professor Mohammad Firoj Jaman of the zoology department at the University of Dhaka told BBC Bangla: "We have limitations in many places. There is a shortage of staff, and not enough allocation for wildlife conservation. In many cases the management that is actually needed is not happening."

Source: BBC Bangla