Primary forests inside Pablakhali Wildlife Sanctuary, one of Bangladesh’s largest protected areas, continue to get cleared, recent satellite data show.
The tropical evergreen and semi-evergreen forests of Pablakhali have historically been home to rare and threatened species such as Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), clouded leopards (Neofelis nebulosa), sloth bears (Melursus ursinus), western hoolock gibbons (Hylobates hoolock), tigers (Panthera tigris), great hornbills (Buceros bicornis) and white-winged ducks (Cairina scutulata).
However, from 2002 to 2023, Pablakhali lost nearly 800 hectares (2,000 acres), around 9%, of its primary forest, according to satellite data collated by the University of Maryland and visualized on the Global Forest Watch (GFW) monitoring platform.
This spate of forest loss seems to be continuing. Preliminary satellite data on GFW show that from January to July 2024, there was further deforestation within one of the last remnants of primary forests, located in the park’s north.
Mongabay couldn’t confirm reasons for this latest forest loss. However, deforestation within the sanctuary is well-acknowledged in various studies and reports.
The rugged mountains of the Chittagong Hill Tracts, where Pablakhali is located, have traditionally been home to numerous ethnic communities and Indigenous tribes. After Bangladesh became independent in 1971, the region saw local armed conflict, with the ethnic communities demanding a sovereign state.
It was after the Bangladesh government signed a peace accord with the communities in 1997 that large-scale deforestation started, M. Monirul H. Khan, chair of the zoology department at Jahangirnagar University, told Mongabay in an email. “Prior to that it was very difficult to extract logs/timber from the forest.”
There’s also been increased migration of people from the plains into the hills, researchers say, leading to an expansion of jhum, or shifting cultivation. In this traditional farming method, farmers burn down a patch of forest to grow crops. After harvest, they move to a new area, allowing the older field to rest and regenerate into forest.
It’s not just that jhum has expanded. The interval between each jhum cycle has also shrunk over the past two or three decades, researcher Mamunul Hoque Khan wrote in his 2013 Ph.D. thesis. This gives no time for the sloping terrain here to stabilize, leading to soil erosion and further deforestation. Pablakhali Wildlife Sanctuary “has been converted into almost a barren field because of massive deforestation,” Mamunul Hoque Khan wrote.
Illegal felling of trees for timber also contributes to Pablakhali’s deforestation, notes the Bangladesh government’s forestry master plan for 2017-2036.
“Pablakhali is experiencing frequent landslides and the siltation of streams, particularly in the rainy season, which can be attributed to deforestation,” Monirul H. Khan told Mongabay.
Moreover, the sanctuary is seeing loss of species like tigers, white-winged ducks and sloth bears, Khan added, as well as declines of clouded leopards, Asian elephants and great hornbills.
Shreya Dasgupta is an independent science writer based in Bangalore, India. Follow her on Twitter @ShreyaDasgupta
