Forest Location in Bangladesh (Sundorbon)

Bangladesh is situated in the north eastern side of South Asia between 20° 34' and 26° 38' north latitude and between 88° 01' and 92° 41' east longitude. It lies in the active delta of three main rivers- Padma, Meghna and Jamuna and their numerous tributaries. Bangladesh covers an area of 1,47,570 sq.km and surrounded by India from the west, north and most of east. Myanmar sitauted on the southeastern edge and the Bay of Bengal on the south part.

A small part of tracts higher land occur in Mymensingh, Chittagong, Sylhet, Cox's Bazar and Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) regions. The southwestern region consists of a large amount of dead and Cut-off Rivers. The coastal part of Bangladesh includes the famous and biggest Sundarbans Mangrove Forest. A number of depressed basins are found in the district of greater Mymensingh and Sylhet which are inundated by fresh water during the monsoon season that gradually dry out during the dry winter season. These depressed basins are called 'Haor'.

Bangladeshi Climate is sub-tropical and monsoon rainfall varies from 1200-3500mm. Rice is the major staple crop while jute, sugarcane, and tea are the main cash crops. Other cash crops are wheat, tobacco, pulses, vegetable and tree fruits. Garments, raw and manufactured jute goods, fish, tea and hides and skins are the chief exports.
Bangladesh is noted for its estuarine environment, yet less than 10 percent of its total water flow originates from its own sources and rest comes from India, Bhutan and Nepal. Normally 20 percent of the country gets flooded during the rainy season.

Bangladesh possesses enormous large area of wetlands including rivers and streams, freshwater lakes and marshes, haors, baors, beels, water storage reservoirs, fish ponds, flooded cultivated fields and estuarine process with extensive mangrove forest. Wetlands of coastal area and marine origin are less important in Bangladesh. The haors, baors, beels and jheels are of fluvial origin and are commonly identified for freshwater wetlands. These freshwater wetlands occupy four landscape units -floodplains, freshwater marshes, lakes and swamp forests.

Characteristics being identified in the lower end of the topography, wetlands are subject to periodic inundation/flooding, shallow to deep, during rainy season. For understand the hydro-geomorphological characteristics of the wetlands, a typical haor may be considered as an ideal example.

Apart from the major river such as Padma, Meghna and Jamuna courses and streams, the major wetlands of fluvial origin occupy the floodplains. The manmade wetlands including ponds, dighis and lakes are distributed all over the land. Some important wetlands of Bangladesh are chalon beel, Atrai basin, lower Punarbhaba floodplain, Gopalganj-Khulna Beels, Arial Beel and Surma-Kushiyara.

Importance the wetlands have a wide area of ecological, socio-cultural, commercial and economic importance and values in the country. These are important habitats for a huge variety of flora and fauna of local, national and regional significance. In the clean water wetlands the floral composition. Wetlands are critically important in the country for human settlements, fisheries, agricultural diversity, biodiversity, navigation & communication and eco-system.

Degradation of wetlands has caused many kinds of problems including extinction and reduction of wildlife, extinction of many indigenous wild and domesticated rice varieties, Loss of many indigenous aquatic plants, shrubs, herbs and weeds, loss of natural soil nutrients, loss of natural water sources and of their resultant benefits, increase in the occurrence of flooded and degeneration of wetland based occupations, eco-systems, socio-economic institutions and cultures.

Mangroves, the coastal area of tropical forests on land, and also called "salt water forests", have provided livelihood for a lot of local people in Bangladesh. The Sundarbans the world's largest mangrove forest stretches for almost 6,000 square miles across India and Bangladesh, a natural barrier against tsunamis and frequent cyclones that blow in from Bay of Bengal. With roots that tolerate salt water, the forest's mangrove trees grow 70 feet or more high islands of layered sand and gray clay, deposited by rivers which flow more than thousand miles from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal.

More than last 20 years, shrimp and tiger prawn exporters have taken over thousands of rice paddies and other farms and flooded them with salt water to raise the temperature.

Squeezed between the trees and thousands of expanding shrimp and tiger prawn farms, at least 100,000 urban people lives in Bangladesh risk Bengal tiger attacks who catch fish, cut trees and gather honey in the Sundarbans forest. For thousands of families who refuse to leave, the only select left is the hazardous work of gathering honey, catching fish or cutting trees in the mangrove forest, which lies in a region with one of this country's heaviest concentrations of shrimp and tiger prawn farms, extending almost fifty miles inland.

Many village peoples enter the forest for cut trees, for fishing, for collect hogla pata to supply factories that make hardboard for furniture and buildings, and additional wood products. Honey hunters often have one of the most risky job, searching for bees' nests in vegetation so dense that the only way through is on hands and knees. Each spring season, the honey collectors go deeply into debt to rent boats for their journey through a vast warren of muddy saltwater rivers and canals that meander around thousands of jungle islands. They have to stock up on food and supplies for their trips that may be up to three months.

Thrust into the deep Sundorbons by shrimp farming, villagers, honey hunters have to struggle for the liquid gold, closely preserved by forest animals such as pythons, king cobras, crocodiles and most dangerous the man-eating Bengal tigers.

----

The experts invent that foliage has been stripped from the branches of trees in nearly a third of this mangrove forest which was inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1997, while numerous huge number of trees have been felled and the crowns of others severely damaged.

The greatest damage has been saw in the East Sundarbans, the biologically richest part of the forest, which lies in the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers to the Bay of Bengal.

More than three thousand and two hundred people are confirmed to have been killed and almost 880 others remain missing as a result of Cyclone Sidr, which struck Bangladesh on fifteen November, bringing torrential rain and blow winds of up to 240 kilometers per hour.

The experts have not yet been able to identify the impact of the cyclone on the wildlife in the Sundarbans (mangrove forest), which is home to numerous endangered or threatened species just like as the Bengal tiger, the estuarine crocodile, king cobra and the Indian python. Its complex network of tidal water lands, small islands and mudflats are also breeding grounds for fish, shrimp and crab, providing a livelihood for an estimated thirty lakhs people.

In a press statement which released by UNESCO at its Paris headquarters, the experts said that the damage caused by Cyclone Sidr has left the Sundarbans ecosystem vulnerable to poaching and other intrusions that could jeopardize its regeneration.

Many field stations, boats, jetties and equipment drived by the country’s govt. Forest Department has been washed out to sea, compromising the Department’s capacity to manage the 1,40,000 hectare site.

The experts invite on international donors for help Bangladesh rebuild and restore its infrastructure and replace the lost boats and communication equipment. So that it can better protect the Sundarbans for Bangladesh.