Elephants are being killed freely in Bangladesh, and their numbers have fallen significantly in the past few years. Leaders of various environmental organisations believe that if the killing continues, within a few years elephants will survive nowhere in the country except in zoos. To protect elephants and other wildlife, they said, forests must be protected first.

The leaders of the Bangladesh Nature Conservation Alliance (BNCA), a coalition of 33 environmental organisations, said this at a webinar marking World Elephant Day, held on the Zoom platform on the afternoon of Friday, 12 August.

The webinar was chaired by Professor Dr Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder, BNCA convener and chairman of the environmental science department at Stamford University. Professor Dr Gulshan Ara Latifa of the zoology department at Dhaka University presented the keynote paper.

It was moderated by Mohammad Ezaz, joint convener of the alliance and chairman of the River and Delta Research Centre (RDRC). Other speakers included Abdul Wahab, executive director of the Centre for Global Environment and Development (CGED); Suman Shams, chairman of Nongor; environmental science teacher Dr Mahmuda Parvin; wildlife researcher Adnan Azad; Ehsanul Haque Jasim, president of Nature Loving People (NLP); Rashedul Majid, chief executive of Environment People; Sadia Chowdhury of the Marine Journalist Network (MJN); Aminul Mithu, Shahid Hasan Khan, Nayan Sarkar, Alamgir Hossain and Swapan Kumar Nath.

The speakers feared that unless elephants are conserved and their killing by people is stopped, the animal will one day become extinct.

Gulshan Ara Latifa said one characteristic of Asian elephants is that they do not easily harm anyone, yet they are now subjected to brutal cruelty. Elephants were once seen at Hatirjheel and Pilkhana, and elephants were taken from Hatirjheel to Pilkhana to be cared for, but such elephants are no longer seen. The number of elephants in the country has dwindled to about 200, she said.

Stressing conservation, she said elephant habitats must be protected in order to save elephants, and if necessary special steps should be taken to conserve them by creating protected forests.

In his address as chair, Professor Dr Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder said the elephant is a very important wild animal. "To protect all kinds of wildlife, including elephants, we must first protect our forests. If the country has forests, there will be elephants and other wildlife," he said.

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