Wealth of beauty in silence needs to be explored and protected

Our group that included 20 tourists and nature lovers, both male and female, was headed for the forest by a vessel from Khulna Jailkhana Ghat. Most of the members availing the trip for 4 days and 5 nights were transported by an AC bus from Dhaka. Our vessel steamed off from Khulna at 9pm halting near Mangla at 12:30pm because of inadequate navigational facilities at night. Then steaming off at 5 am, our vessel reached Kachikhali deep inside the forest at about 1-30pm where we were supposed to stay for the night. After a hurried lunch, our group set out by speed boat from our main vessel anchored in the wide river in the hope of seeing some wild life, especially deer, that move in herds eating kewra leaves.

While cruising through one of the narrow creeks, branching out on both sides from the main river, all of them naturally created, we saw a herd of spotted deer in the forest near the bank. Ebb tide had set in by the time exposing the banks on both sides and making it difficult for the boat to make its way through these shallow creeks The boat returned to the main vessel which started cruising towards Katka, another wild life point at 6pm and reached Katka at 9 p.m. Next morning the same speed boat cruising through the narrow creek took us to Katka watch tower. With the ebb tide setting in, we had to go up the bank from the boat by a jetty made of weak wooden frame work at least fifteen feet above the water level.

In such a precarious situation, the hand of the guide and the engine driver helped us to get to land above. Here, on the jetty, our guide, a young man in his thirties addressed the group, mostly men and women in the age group of 50 to 70 explaining the way we would have to walk in the jungle that would take us to Katka sea beach, our last destination during the jungle walk. Nearer the jetty and watch tower, we saw a plaque erected in memory of the ill-fated 11 students of the Khulna university who were drowned in the sea overlooking the Katka beach while bathing in the year 2001. To our utter disappointment, we saw no wild life during our walk in the jungle except in the afternoon a herd of spotted deer that came to drink water from a sweet water pond dug for them near the Katka forest range office.

To walk through the mangrove forest is difficult because the roots of the trees, called pneumatophore or breathing roots, grow into the ground a certain distance and then turn upwards to come out of the ground. We stumbled and almost all of us were caught unprepared as the sharp roots started sticking in the soles of our feet through the walking shoes. On our way back from the sea beach we walked up to the watch tower about 30 feet above the ground but no wild life other than deer and a few wild boars were in sight. Our presence had apparently scared away any member of the cat family. Forest officials in the Katka office told me that tigers abound in areas of the forest where prey density is large and in that light Katka and Burigoalini are ideal ranges.. Unhappily, Sundarbans' Royal Bengal Tigers are now a vanishing breed, disappearing faster than people would have expected. Inside the forest, these tigers are succumbing to poaching and relentless pressure of human population growth.

Worse, as these people told me only about 500-600 employees, mostly guards are keeping watch over a 5770 sq. km area of the Sundarbans forest. A large chunk of the population of Bagerhat, Khulna and especially about 18 lakh people of Satkhira residing in the border areas of the Sundarbans, many of them working as Bawali (golpata and wood cutter) Mawali (honey collector and Jawali (fishermen) depend on the Sundarbans for their livelihood and not infrequently these people, backed by armed poachers and greedy smugglers kill these majestic animals because their pelts and body parts fetch princely prices in the black market. The survivors are impossible to count with any precision but fewer than 400 Royal Bengal Tigers remain as an unofficial estimate of the forest officials in the Sundarbans reveals.

The main thrust of the country's effort is to build a national management strategy for tigers. This painstaking effort must focus on collecting data on diet, pack behaviour, gene pool and habitat. During my stay in Katka last a tiger was trapped in Chaprakhali forest under Sharankhola range as a part of such effort. As I talked to Adam Burlow, (30), a tiger researcher working for the U.S Wild life and Fish Foundation and then residing in Katka, I was fascinated to learn about the way the tiger was trapped while it was feasting on a cow left there. Adam and his party observed from a watch tower covered with jungle leaves in a bushy surrounding.

As the tiger lay busy feasting on its prey, a tranquilizer shot from the watch tower made the tiger unconscious. After ascertaining that the shot had worked, Adam and his party, that included a forest guard Abu Taleb who hails from Satkhira and is vastly knowledgeable about tiger behaviour, came down from the tower and after examining the unconscious tiger observed that the body temperature of the tiger had shot up to 107degree F, a normal occurrence after the shot. After rubbing ice over its head and body when the temperature came down to 101 degree, GPS collar capable of transmitting radio signals detectable by the antenna of the monitor with Adam was put on the tiger's neck. After about eight hours the tiger measuring about 2.8 m, as Adam told me, regained consciousness and made a desperate effort to rise up. The initial attempt failed but it mustered enough strength to stand on its feet the next moment and succeeded. The tiger this time melted into the forest leaving the prey.

Adam told me that during the next eight months his team would continue its effort to trap tigers through such tranquilizer shots in eight other locations deep inside the forest, preferably 6 males and 2 females. This would enable them to have some definite idea about the number and other behavioural aspects of the tigers in the Sundarbans.

Ironically, what makes the tiger so vulnerable to human imagination is its unshakable grip on human imagination. For millennia, tigers have prowled the minds of mankind as surely as they have trod the steppes and forests of Asia. Given the voracious human appetite for land, forest resources like wood, golpata and honey, unrestricted exploitation of different species of fish through shrimp culture near the coastal belt, keeping the tigers and other wild life and plant species in the tranquil zone of the forest would be nothing short of a miracle. Unless something dramatic is done to reverse the trend, tigers will be seen only in captivity, prowling in zoos or performing in circuses. The wild tigers of old will be gone forever, their glory surviving merely in storybooks, on film and in dreams.

The emerald mangrove forest of the Sundarbans seems to be an unspoiled showcase for the biodiversity of life. In the lush territory of the coastal belt of the Bay of Bengal there was hardly a break in the canopy of trees namely, sundari, gewa, keora, goran etc. and virtually every acre was alive with the cacophony of insects, birds and monkeys. But mainly because of human assault, in the country 64 species of vertebrate animal, 40 species of mammal, 21 species of reptiles and 23 species of fish have already disappeared It is worth mentioning here that the Sundarbans forest treasures 330 plant species, 35 species of reptiles, 400 types of fishes,270 species of birds and 42 species of mammals.

Sure enough, the biodiversity of fisheries and forests is of great importance to people as it provides them with crucial sources of protein, fats, oils and vitamins. If, as reports from different conservation agencies indicate, these resources are under threat from over-fishing and pollution of water bodies, the people of this impoverished land are in for trouble. But if these wild life, plant species and marine resources could be sustained, its biodiversity could contribute to the health of both humans and animals and the plants on which they depend by keeping populations of disease causing organisms and pests under control.

Unbelievable it may sound but it is true as I saw on my river route to and back from the Sundarbans thousands of small trawlers equipped with blue nets catching shrimp fries in the river Pashur and Shelagang. But these catches do not only track down shrimp fries, they include fries of other species and these are discarded or tossed back into the river when they are already dead. The practice followed without any regulation has already contributed to severe depletion of marine resources. Besides, shrimp farming as practiced now in the coastal belt is particularly damaging to the mangrove forests, coastal necklaces of low lying trees that nurture marine life, filter water and soften the sea's constant battering of the shoreline.

Md. Asadullah Khan is a former teacher of Physics and Controller of Examinations, BUET.