World Wildlife Day 2026: how households can protect the wildlife around them

The birds, squirrels, bats, mynas, sparrows and small reptiles that live around our homes are, like us, part of nature. On 3 March 2026, World Wildlife Day, Jagonews24's lifestyle desk asked whether people in Bangladesh were doing anything for them, and set out the everyday habits that help: planting native trees, leaving wild birds free, putting out clean water, using fewer pesticides, calling the right people for an injured animal and teaching children kindness to animals. This report sets out that advice with the background behind it: what the day was about in 2026, how much of the country's wildlife was under threat, which animals share our towns and villages, and what the wildlife law in force on that date said.

The concrete cities people have built push these animals into an ever tighter corner. Trees, water bodies and safe places to nest are shrinking, so the wildlife living closest to human settlements faces some of the greatest danger. Protecting it, the original report argued, has to start at home: on the balcony, on the rooftop and in the yard.

World Wildlife Day is held every year on 3 March, the day in 1973 on which the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) was signed. On 20 December 2013, at its 68th session, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 3 March as UN World Wildlife Day, and the same resolution named the CITES Secretariat as the facilitator of the global observance. According to the Geneva Environment Network's page on the day, last updated on 16 February 2026, the day celebrates the many forms of wild animals and plants and the benefits their conservation brings to people, and reminds the world of the need to step up the fight against wildlife crime and the human-caused loss of species.

The theme for 2026 was "Medicinal and Aromatic Plants: Conserving Health, Heritage and Livelihoods". The same page explained that around 50,000 to 70,000 species of medicinal and aromatic plants are harvested around the world; about 1,500 of them are estimated to be listed in the CITES appendices, and more than 800 in Appendix II. Over 20 per cent of the plant species used for medicinal and aromatic purposes are considered threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, mainly because of overharvesting, habitat loss, climate change and unregulated or illegal international trade. The page also cited the World Health Organization's recognition that in developing countries 70 to 95 per cent of the population relies on traditional medicine for primary health care, and noted that one in five people rely on wild plants, algae and fungi for food and income. The 2026 United Nations event for the day was held online.

The theme was a reminder that "wildlife" in the CITES sense covers plants as well as animals. The household advice in this report is mostly about animals, but its first point, planting native trees, serves both: the trees are wildlife too, and they are what the birds and bats of a neighbourhood live on.

Many people think of wildlife as tigers in the Sundarbans or elephants in the hills of Chattogram. Banglapedia, the national encyclopaedia of Bangladesh, defines wildlife more broadly: any vertebrate animal other than humans, domesticated animals and fishes, living in its natural habitat, including amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, their eggs and their young. A wild animal, it notes, does not have to live in a forest: a wall lizard, a sparrow, a pigeon, a myna or a crow are all members of the wild fauna. The wildlife law in force on 3 March 2026 used a similarly wide definition, covering animals of every kind and breed, at any stage of their life cycle, whose origin is considered wild.

That wildlife was under heavy pressure. In the Red List of Bangladesh 2015, unveiled in Dhaka on 22 June 2016, IUCN Bangladesh and the Forest Department assessed 1,619 animal species in seven groups: 138 mammals, 566 birds, 167 reptiles, 49 amphibians, 253 freshwater fishes, 141 crustaceans and 305 butterflies. They classified 390 species as threatened: 56 critically endangered, 181 endangered and 153 vulnerable. Thirty-one species were listed as regionally extinct, meaning they had disappeared from Bangladesh, and 278 as data deficient. IUCN said the list showed that a large number of species had recently undergone rapid decline, and pointed to overexploitation and habitat degradation as the dominant threats. It was the first full update since IUCN Bangladesh published its first Red List in 2000.

Banglapedia describes how far the habitat had already shrunk: by its account forest cover in Bangladesh had been reduced by more than half since the 1970s, and less than 8 per cent of the country was under forest. It lists animals lost from the country during the last century, among them three species of rhinoceros, the wild buffalo, the swamp deer and the pink-headed duck.

The world picture was the same. The global assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), released on 6 May 2019, found that around 1 million animal and plant species were threatened with extinction, many within decades. It ranked the five direct drivers of the loss of nature, in order, as changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of organisms, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species. Three quarters of the land-based environment had been significantly altered by human action, and urban areas had more than doubled since 1992. The first two drivers, the loss of habitat and the taking of animals from the wild, are exactly the ones that ordinary households can do something about.

The animals the original report named are among the commonest in Bangladesh, and each depends on something people control.

The Oriental magpie-robin, the doyel, is the national bird of Bangladesh. Banglapedia describes it as a black-and-white, bulbul-sized, long-tailed bird that is usually not afraid of human habitations. It feeds on insects, snails, earthworms, centipedes, small lizards and some plant matter. It breeds from February to July, with a peak in April and May, so on World Wildlife Day the breeding season had already begun, and males were singing and defending their territories.

Mynas, the shalik, are described in Banglapedia as gregarious birds, common about towns and cultivation, that feed mainly on insects, fruits, grains and nectar and nest in holes or cavities in trees or buildings. Bangladesh has 12 species, three of them migratory; the residents include the common myna, the bank myna, the jungle myna and the hill myna. Some species, the encyclopaedia notes, are popular cage birds.

Squirrels are slender, mostly tree-dwelling rodents with long bushy tails. Of about 270 species worldwide, Bangladesh has eight, according to Banglapedia, from the palm squirrels of village groves to the giant flying squirrels of the hill forests.

Bats are the largest group of the country's land mammals. Banglapedia records that one quarter of Bangladesh's 113 mammal species are bats, and that the Indian pipistrelle, the chamchika, is both the smallest mammal in the country and its commonest and most widespread. The flying fox or greater fruit bat, the kola badur, roosts in colonies of a dozen to more than a thousand in banyan, fig, mango, bamboo, coconut, betel nut, date palm and palmyra palm trees and feeds on mango, litchi, guava, banana and sapota. Fruit bats occasionally damage fruit, but the encyclopaedia credits them with much of the cross-pollination and seed dispersal of wild plants, and with controlling insect pests.

Across all groups the country is rich in birds: Banglapedia counts 628 species in Bangladesh, 388 of them resident and 240 migratory. The house sparrows on a balcony, the bats flying out at dusk and the magpie-robin on a branch are as much a part of this wildlife as the tigers and elephants that usually stand for it.

Trees are the main lifeline for birds and small animals in towns and villages. Native fruiting and flowering trees give birds food and places to nest, the original report advised, and planting local species rather than only ornamental foreign ones helps keep the local environment in balance.

The animals described above show why. Mynas and many parakeets nest in tree holes; the flying fox roosts in banyan, fig, mango and palm trees and feeds on their fruits; the magpie-robin hunts insects in gardens and groves. The banyan, Ficus bengalensis, is found all over the country, according to Banglapedia, and an old banyan with its spreading canopy and aerial roots can shelter a whole community of animals.

Trees were also part of the wildlife law in force on the day. The Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Ordinance 2026 protected 100 tree species that support wildlife habitat in its fourth schedule, Prothom Alo reported on 6 December 2025, after the interim government's advisory council had approved the ordinance. Under the ordinance's section 10, damaging, destroying, collecting or transporting a plant listed in that schedule without a licence or permit was prohibited, and section 16 allowed heritage trees, memorial trees, sacred trees and kunjaban, groves with social, religious or traditional value that also shelter wildlife, to be declared and protected.

Buying parrots, mynas or other wild birds as a hobby and keeping them in cages is illegal and inhumane, the original report said, and it feeds the illegal wildlife trade. Wild birds belong to nature, not to home decoration.

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), on its wildlife crime page as archived on 28 December 2025, estimated that the illegal wildlife trade generated over 20 billion US dollars a year and called it the largest direct threat to the future of many of the world's most threatened species, second only to habitat destruction. It listed exotic pets among the reasons consumers buy trafficked animals.

Bangladesh's own enforcement record shows where the cage-bird trade comes from. In a report published on 26 September 2025, a wildlife inspector of the Wildlife Crime Control Unit told The Business Standard that birds, especially parakeets, are highly vulnerable because they are easy to gather in large numbers, need little space and are simple to smuggle. Thousands of parakeets gather in harvested paddy fields in November and December, when trappers catch them; warehouse owners buy them at Tk 300 to 400 each and, when they become scarce in April and May, sell them for Tk 1,200 to 1,500. The inspector described the rescue of 1,445 parakeets from Riazuddin bird market in Chattogram in 2017, with a team of the Rapid Action Battalion, and of 2,200 munias from Bhadal Bazar in Bagerhat in June 2016 that had been trapped with nets at night in coastal forests. He also said the unit lacked investigation powers and weapons and relied on other law enforcers.

Earlier raids had found the same pattern near Dhaka. In December 2016 the unit and law enforcers rescued 304 birds in Savar, including rose-ringed parakeets, vernal hanging parrots and tricoloured munias, and released them the same day at a botanical garden in Dhaka, Prothom Alo's English edition reported; the month before, the unit had rescued 1,451 birds.

Parrots are among the birds most often caged. Banglapedia lists six parrot species in Bangladesh, the vernal hanging parrot, the red-breasted parakeet, the Alexandrine parakeet, the grey-headed parakeet, the rose-ringed parakeet and the blossom-headed parakeet, and records the Alexandrine parakeet as critically endangered. Most nest in tree holes and care for their young for two to three months.

On 3 March 2026 the law on caged birds was the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Ordinance 2026, in force since 7 January 2026, which replaced the Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Act 2012. Its main rules for households were these:

• Section 10(1): no one may rear or keep any wild animal in captivity, or possess, buy, sell or transport a wild animal or its trophy, without a licence, possession certificate or permit.
• Section 10(2): wild animals may not be bought or sold through social media advertisements, in haats and bazars or by any other means.
• Section 10(3): all wild animals, their body parts, meat and trophies are regarded as the property of the government.
• Section 44: breaking section 10 is punishable with up to one year in prison, a fine of up to Tk 1 lakh, or both; a repeat offence with up to two years, a fine of up to Tk 2 lakh, or both.

The ordinance brought 1,599 species of animals and plants under protection, including 741 bird species, 133 mammals, 160 reptiles and 60 amphibians, Prothom Alo reported in December 2025. Its first schedule was divided into three parts: tigers and elephants in Schedule 1(a), 250 species in Schedule 1(b) and 127 in Schedule 1(c), with 1,207 species in Schedule 2. Hunting the animals in Schedules 1(a) and 1(b) was made a cognisable and non-bailable offence under section 46. The country director of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Bangladesh told the paper that under the old law catching birds had not been a cognisable offence, so forest officials who caught someone with birds could often do no more than seize the birds. The third schedule listed 15 species of rats that farmers may drive away and which the law does not protect.

In the hot months a small bowl of clean water on a balcony, rooftop or window ledge helps birds, the original report advised. The water must be changed regularly, though, so that mosquitoes do not breed in it.

That warning matters in Bangladesh, where dengue is spread by Aedes mosquitoes that lay their eggs in containers holding water. The World Health Organization's dengue fact sheet of 21 August 2025 advises removing artificial habitats that can hold water and covering, emptying and cleaning domestic water storage containers every week. A bird bath should be treated the same way: emptied, scrubbed and refilled with fresh water, at the latest every week.

Heavy use of pesticides in home gardens and rooftop plots reduces the insects that many birds eat, the original report warned, and toxic chemicals also harm small animals directly. Using environment-friendly alternatives protects local wildlife.

Research supports the link between insecticides and birds that feed on insects. A study by Caspar Hallmann and colleagues, published in the journal Nature in July 2014, found that in the Netherlands local populations of insect-eating birds fared significantly worse in areas where surface water held more imidacloprid, the most widely used neonicotinoid insecticide. Where concentrations exceeded 20 nanograms per litre, bird populations tended to decline by 3.5 per cent a year on average. The authors noted that insects and other invertebrates make up a large part of many birds' diet in the breeding season and are indispensable for raising chicks. Pollution was also one of the five main drivers of nature's decline in the IPBES global assessment.

The magpie-robin, which hunts insects, snails, earthworms and centipedes on the ground and breeds from February, is the kind of bird that loses its food when a garden is sprayed. For pests in a home garden or rooftop plot, readers can ask the upazila agriculture officer of the Department of Agricultural Extension about methods that do not need heavy spraying.

People often bring an injured bird or wild animal home, the original report noted, but the wrong care can harm it further. Contacting the local Forest Department office or a wildlife rescue organisation is the safe course. Untrained people should not try to catch or handle a wild animal, and never a snake or any other animal that can bite.

The law in force on the day put this work on the Forest Department. Under section 5 of the ordinance, the department, through the chief wildlife warden and other wardens, was responsible for the protection, welfare and security of wildlife; it was to draw up guidelines for the protection of rescued and injured wild animals and arrange their care and treatment, and it could form volunteer teams and work with non-government organisations on wildlife welfare. Section 34 allowed the department to set up rescue centres providing treatment, food, shelter and security for wild animals, and section 14 required rescued or seized animals to be released into a suitable natural environment, unless there was a risk of spreading disease or they needed care. Section 35 provided for a Wildlife Crime Control Unit under the Forest Department, made up of forest officers, customs officers and members of the law enforcement agencies, able to work at airports, land ports, seaports and anywhere else in the country.

Where a wild animal threatens human life, section 12 left the decision to remove or rehabilitate it to a wildlife warden, with the approval of the chief wildlife warden or an authorised officer, and required a report to the advisory board and scientific committee within 15 days. Dealing with a dangerous animal was, in other words, a job for officials, not for neighbours.

There is a health reason for caution too. The World Health Organization's Nipah virus fact sheet of 29 January 2026 states that fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are the natural host of the virus, that cases have been reported in Bangladesh, and that the case fatality rate is estimated at 40 to 75 per cent. WHO advises keeping bats away from date palm sap collection, boiling freshly collected date palm juice and never drinking it raw, and washing and peeling fruit and throwing away any fruit with signs of bat bites. A grounded or injured bat should therefore not be picked up with bare hands, and anyone bitten or scratched by a wild animal should see a doctor.

Lessons in protecting nature should begin in childhood, the original report said. Not destroying birds' nests, not throwing stones at animals and being kind to them are the habits that make environment-friendly citizens.

The ordinance treated cruelty as an offence. Section 10(4) made any cruel treatment of a wild animal punishable, and its explanation listed beating, teasing, blindfolding, keeping an animal captive without need, frightening it, causing it suffering in transport, overloading it, killing it with electric fencing and publishing cruelty to wildlife on social media. Section 13 allowed the government, by gazette notification, to ban the import, sale, use or carrying of air guns in the interest of wildlife conservation, with exceptions for registered shooting clubs and for the safety of communities living next to forests.

The timing of the day gave the advice extra weight. With the magpie-robin's breeding season running from February to July, and its peak in April and May, the weeks after World Wildlife Day were the time when nests in gardens and on buildings were most likely to hold eggs or chicks.

World Wildlife Day is not only about tigers or elephants in the forest, the report concluded. Protecting the sparrow that visits the balcony, the bats that fly out at dusk and the magpie-robin perched on a branch is part of it too, and protecting wildlife is part of daily behaviour rather than a distant task.

Photo: Arif tonmoy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Geneva Environment Network, IUCN Bangladesh, IPBES, Banglapedia, Wildlife (Conservation and Security) Ordinance 2026 (official text, Legislative and Parliamentary Affairs Division), Prothom Alo, The Business Standard, WWF, World Health Organization, Nature (Hallmann et al., 2014)