Protecting Cox's Bazar shores

Japanese students planting bain and keora saplings in North Nuniachhra in Cox's Bazar shore area. PHOTO: STAR

Braving drizzles and ignoring knee-high mud, they planted Bain and Keora saplings in North Nuniachhara area near the tourist town on Monday.

This is part of a plan by a Japanese organisation--OISCA Internationalto plant about two lakh Bain and Keora saplings on newly emerged 35 hectares of land in the shoreline to create mangroves to conserve ecology and provide protection from natural calamities. This will also protect salt producing areas.

Chief of OISCA, Yasuaki Nagai-shi, inaugurated the programme by planting a Bain sapling at Bakkhalir Char.

The 16 Japanese students including four girls were joined by 50 students and teachers from a local BRAC school in the tree plantation.

In 2001, 520,000 saplings were planted on 20 hectares. Since 1992, a total of 4,470,000 saplings have been planted on 425 hectares in the shoreline.

Forests in the shoreline can protect life during devastating natural calamities like the April 29 tidal surge in 1991 which washed away at least 70,000 people in Cox's Bazar.

But the newly created mangroves are being destroyed for shrimp cultivation. In last five years, at least 500 shrimp enclosures have been created on about 30,000 acres of shore land by cutting forests, according to environmentalists here.