Tree fellers turn forest guardians in Bangladesh
Ahad Miah has come a long way from his tree felling days. He is now one of the custodians of the Lauachhara protected forest, working shoulder to shoulder with government appointed forest guards. "Now we can sleep in peace. The police and forest gaurds are not after us,' says the team leader of a forest patrol. He has turned the corner because of Nishorgo Support Project of the Bangladesh government and usaid, the international aid programme of the us government.
He is from Dolubari Muslimpara, a settlement in the vicinity of Lauachhara, 500 hectares of evergreen and semi-evergreen forest 10 km off Srimangal in Sylhet, Bangladesh. Two years ago, illegal tree felling was the main occupation of villagers like Ahad Mia. Their poverty worked against the rich biodiversity of Lauachhara. Nishorgo has provided the the poor villagers a unique chance to earn a living off forest conservation, rather than its destruction.
The results are there to see Within three years of the project, Lauachhara has seen a remarkable improvement. Monirul Khan, wildlife zoologist at the Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka, carried out a census of birds in 2005 and another in 2006. "We found that the number of those birds has increased by 20 per cent this year. It proves that the health of the ground forest and the mid-level forest has improved,' he says. The census found an increase in the number of some indicator birds species, like the red jungle fowl and the puffed throated babbler.
These signals are considered good for the hoolock gibbon, which is in the World Conservation Union's list of the world's most critical 25 mammals in 2006-2008. Of the total of about 700 such gibbons in the world, Bangladesh has 300, according to biodiversity expert Anwarul Islam. Myanmar, China and India have the remaining. Petra Ostergerg, a researcher from Finland who has worked on the hoolock gibbon, conducted a census in September 2006. She found 59 gibbons in 16 families in Lauachhara and adjoining forests.
Zoologists consider the hoolock the