- Bangladesh is making a list of sacred forests, aged trees and other socially important flora in a bid to strengthen forest conservation.
- The need for conservation of these fragmented forest patches has been neglected for a long time despite being mentioned in the country’s 2012 Wildlife (Conservation and Protection) Law. However, the issue is now finally being looked into.
- Conservationists welcome the initiative and say they believe that the new measures will help protect the biodiversity and ecology that had been set aside in the past.
With an aim to protect biodiversity that’s become fragmented and is scattered across the country, Bangladesh is listing all the old, sacred and socially important trees and forests.
The Forest Department has been collecting information from the locals in various parts of the country about locations and details of sites that are centuries-old and sacred to the surrounding communities. On Feb. 10 this year, the government served a public notice in this regard.
As per the notice, the government requested information from people about trees that are more than 50 years old and small forest patches that have social, cultural or religious value.
Media reports also indicate that Bangladesh has such old trees, especially banyan and mango trees, growing across the country.
“We have already received information about some of them, but not much from the common people, unlike what we expected,” said Syeda Rizwana Hasan, advisor to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC).
“Considering the low volume of information, we have now engaged all our local forest officials to collect information on such aged trees and sacred forest patches so that we can profile them and declare them either protected or special conservation areas,” she said.
The initiative to protect the sacred forests, aged trees and other socially important plants was made under a provision of Bangladesh Wildlife (Conservation and Protection) Law 2012.
As these forest patches are mostly private land and owned by local people, the government is working on formulating a policy as a guideline to manage such areas. Usually, several policies and rules are formulated under a law to manage different aspects of that law.
“We have already drafted the rules, by which the [listed] forest patches will be managed,” said Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain, a divisional forest officer at the Forest Department. “As per the drafted rules, [all] declared forest patches, aged trees or sacred plantations will be managed by a committee led by the community people, voluntarily.”
Replying to a query on the abundance of such groves in Bangladesh, Hossain told Mongabay, “Our experience in working on forest conservation indicates that such small forest patches or old trees are found across the country and are not poor in number. However, the highest abundancy of such groves is found in Chittagong Hill Tracts [CHT], comprised of three hill districts — Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban, where they are termed as village common forests.”
The village common forests (VCFs) are natural forests maintained by Indigenous communities around their villages to ensure tree coverage and biodiversity, protect the environment in the face of deforestation, and sustain the wood and bamboo supply.
“As per the drafted rules, the comparatively large forest patches — more than 5 acres [2 hectares] — would be declared as protected, and the other would be declared as ‘Special Conservation Area,’” Hossain said.
Farid Uddin Ahmed, a long-time forest conservationist and former executive director of the NGO Arannayk Foundation, called the government’s move ‘praiseworthy’ and told Mongabay, “This will help to strengthen the country’s forest and biodiversity conservation and small patches of forests, which are rich hubs of biodiversity.”
He said that protecting old trees is important and that every old tree has its own little ecosystem as it serves as a refuge for various species of birds, mammals, ferns, fungi and so on.
Regarding the management of such special conservation, Ahmed said, “A budget will be required to run the conservation initiatives, even if it is voluntary. Therefore, the government should arrange the carbon calculation for each conservation area, so that it could be traded later to generate funds.”
Practices and benefits of such conservations
Conservation of forests and biodiversity through private initiatives is not new in Bangladesh. The country has seen some private conservation practices, especially for birds, run by some local bird lovers.
A community in northern Bangladesh that has arranged a safer space for birds is one example of such initiatives.
Protecting the VCFs to retain fresh water sources in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is another good example of such conservation.
In most cases, the locals came together and formed a committee that runs the conservation process.
Beyond Bangladesh, managing sacred forests is a popular practice across the world. Surrounding countries, India and Nepal, have been preserving such forest patches for a long time.
According to government data, Bangladesh’s total forest cover is 2.6 million hectares (6.4 million acres), which is about 17.4% of its total land area.
A 2023 study on the importance of conserving sacred forests says that, despite the underestimation of such forests, they provide benefits in many aspects, including social, cultural and religious.
As per the study, due to the attached religious or social values and left undisturbed, sacred forest patches and trees are a more suitable habitat for rare and endemic species and, therefore, these forests can preserve their biodiversity for a long time. They also act as a hub for different medicinal plants.
As the plants and forest patches remain untouched from deforestation, they usually play a role in mitigating the negative impacts of global warming by controlling regional temperature and capturing carbon dioxide, the study says.
Banner image: Locals worship a sacred banyan tree in Narayanganj district. Image by Muhammad Mostafigur Rahman.
The Bangladeshi tribe that’s guarding turtles, co-authoring research papers
Citations:
Jashimuddin, M., & Inoue, M. (2012). Management of village common forests in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: Historical background and current issues in terms of sustainability. Open Journal of Forestry, 2(3), 121-137. doi:10.4236/ojf.2012.23016
Sullivan, M.K., Browne, L., Zuluaga, J.C.P., Liu, J., Surendra, A., & Estrada-Villegas, S. (2023). Sacred forest biodiversity conservation: A meta-analysis. Conservation Science and Practice, 6(1). doi:10.1111/csp2.13055
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