EnvironmentBangladesh's inland water transport authority has proposed a Tk 2,000 crore project with a resort, restaurants, an eco-park and a swimming pool on about 63 acres recovered from encroachers on the Bakkhali River in Cox's Bazar; environmental campaigners call it harmful to the river.
GalleryMore than 700 hotels, resorts and cottages in Cox's Bazar have fire-safety gaps and other irregularities; many stand in an ecologically critical area, and building and trading go on despite official notices.
EnvironmentSonadia once drew about 30 spoon-billed sandpipers a winter; last winter only three were seen. Great knot and Nordmann's greenshank are falling fast too, and 12 of 20 coastal shorebird species have declined significantly.
EnvironmentA BRAC project funded by the Bangladesh Climate Change Trust Fund has collected about 150 tonnes of waste on St Martin's Island in 11 months and composts its organic waste, but its first phase ends on 30 November with no decision on renewal.
Bidyanondo Foundation has built a sculpture from five tonnes of waste plastic on Cox's Bazar beach to show the scale of sea pollution; entry to a film beside it costs two used plastic bottles.
HealthAt least 624,000 children in the Cox's Bazar and Bhasan Char camps need urgent aid. UNICEF screened 169,700 children up to June and treated 6,800 for severe malnutrition, while the WHO-led health sector is 64 percent short of funds.
OpinionThe Chakaria Sundarbans once covered more than 21,000 acres and now has a single sundari tree; writer and journalist Khalilullah argues in Prothom Alo that mangroves and shrimp can coexist and that restoring the forest needs political will.
VegetablesAdvised by the agriculture office, more than a hundred farmers in Malgara, Pekua, turned failing paddy land over to cucumbers; Cox's Bazar has 126 hectares under the crop this season and sales of Tk 16.87 crore so far.
FruitsAnwar Hossain of Napiderchar in Kachhapia spent about Tk 70,000 on 40 decimals and some 3,000 seedlings, with 7,000 to 8,000 melons set; he needed 400-500 kg of fertiliser but got only 100 kg.
FisheriesOne trawler's 2,400 hilsa sold for Tk 44 lakh at Fishery Ghat, about Tk 2,000 a kilo; traders blame scarce catches elsewhere, while fishermen worry about the 22 days without work.
FisheriesDistrict fisheries figures show hilsa production in Cox's Bazar fell by about 20.5 percent in 2025-26; officials blame climate change, silted rivers and overfishing.
EnvironmentThe prime minister approved on 3 August a plan to bring in the navy to evict shrimp farms built on cleared mangrove on Sonadia island in Maheshkhali, Cox's Bazar; the Forest Department estimates at least 7,000 acres have been cut.
IslamWork on the Chakaria upazila model mosque, begun in October 2019, is not done; the Public Works Department says the contract will be cancelled with a penalty if it misses next March.
EnvironmentBefore the tourist season has begun, bottles and polythene bearing Myanmar and Thai brand names have piled up on Chhera Dwip, the southern tip of St Martin's Island.
EnvironmentA 2022-23 study recorded 23 mammal species in Inani National Park, three of them critically endangered; settlements, roads and construction threaten to squeeze their habitat.
EnvironmentAbout 4 km of an LGED road of nearly 5 km, costing Tk 25.03 crore, runs through gazetted reserved forest used by wild elephants; the forest department asked for work to stop on 22 September, but it has not fully stopped.
The environment ministry has begun planting and waste removal in the off-season; locals say at least 2,000 of about 2,200 families are now unemployed.
EnvironmentAbout 6,000 acres of mangrove on Sonadia island in Maheshkhali, Cox's Bazar, an ecologically critical area, have been cleared for 50 shrimp enclosures, and a High Court eviction order has yet to be carried out.
Researcher and environmental activist Pavel Partha writes that 1,085 hectares of Cox's Bazar have been lost to the sea since 1989, and that legal recognition of the dunes, their plants and Rakhine traditional knowledge is the way to stop the erosion.
EnvironmentA deep depression over the north Andaman Sea has prompted local cautionary signal 3 at Chattogram and Cox's Bazar ports, and fishing boats have been told to stay out of the deep sea.
The lesser noddy, an Indian Ocean seabird, was first recorded in Bangladesh at Sonadia, Cox's Bazar, in 2024; bird expert A N M Aminur Rahman photographed three near fishers on Belekerdia char.
In Shaplapur, Moheshkhali, a dirt track through 18,286 acres of reserved forest is being turned into a 4.5 km road by LGED; the Forest Department and environmentalists say it will endanger wildlife and spur encroachment.
One Cox's Bazar factory exported 70 tonnes of dried popa fish, produced at a cost of Tk 6 crore, to the US, Hong Kong and China last year; smaller catches are cutting this year's shipments.
An intelligence report says subsidised fertiliser is being smuggled through the Cumilla, Brahmanbaria, Chapainawabganj, Jashore, Satkhira and Cox's Bazar borders with the collusion of dealers and transporters; the Coast Guard and BGB seized 235,908 kg and detained 117 people between June and 15 Sept
Trial plantings of baen (Avicennia) mangroves by the NGO CODEC in the Badarkhali channel and Rampura mouza of Chakaria, Cox's Bazar, are surviving well; experts say the near-vanished forest can return only if tidal flow, blocked by shrimp-farm embankments, is restored and three other barriers are re
Between 6 am and 9.30 am, 24 wholesale sheds and local fishermen at Chowar Fari in Matamuhuri upazila sell about Tk 50 million of mostly un-iced fish a day; July floods that breached shrimp enclosures have pushed prices up this year.
The boat was chased down in deep water south-east of Chhera Dwip late on Friday; ten people were detained and the 240 sacks of urea and other goods were valued at Tk 13.7 lakh, at a time when Aman farmers in several districts are queuing for fertiliser.
FV Kulsuma sold 2,200 hilsa for Tk 2.64 million after five empty days at sea; 4,000 of the district's 6,000 trawlers are idle and hilsa landings have collapsed.
WorldFish tested seven integrated multi-trophic aquaculture models with 131 farmers in Khulna and Cox's Bazar between June 2025 and March 2026; the best pond model returned 181 per cent on investment, but seed and market gaps remain.
The 7,085-hectare park was divided into 11 zones and surveyed with camera traps and line transects, turning up clouded leopard, hoolock gibbon and Asian elephant.
A 13-month camera-trap study caught five images of the cat on three cameras, along with Asian elephant, hoolock gibbon and barking deer among 21 other species; 44 per cent of the 7,085-hectare park suits the leopard, but settlements, refugee camps and farm encroachment threaten it.
FisheriesIn July 2026 Ziaur Rahman of Kutubjom union in Maheshkhali, Cox's Bazar, and his crew found two Sri Lankan fishermen who had drifted in the Bay of Bengal for 36 days on a boat with a failed engine, and brought them ashore.
Rooftop farmingIn fast-growing Cox's Bazar, the district administration has kept a 12,000 sq ft rooftop farm on its three-storey building for four years.
Leaf-eating insects in Teknaf sparked fears in 2020 that desert locusts had reached Bangladesh, but experts found they were a local grasshopper.
Sea fishers in Cox's Bazar face pirates at sea and an unusable landing centre ashore, with no clear date for a new facility.
