Md. Taqi Yasir
Moreover, from Chittagong Hill tracts to the wildlife towards the path of Myanmar, they captured pictures of Himalayan Serow, Leopards, Sambar Deer, Asiatic Golden Cat, Marbled Cat, Barking deer and Dholes-a feral Asian dog.
The wildlife journalist and blogger of “The Guardian” Jeremy Hance made a widespread research in the Chittagong Hills Tract region of Bangladesh about its unknown wildlife. The photographer Shahriar Caesar Rahman who is the executive founder of Creative Conservation Alliance (CCA) and along with some parabiologists of the region helped him through the work procedure.
Jeremy Hance and Caesar’s team succeeded in taking Bangladesh’s first ever photograph of Gaur and Sun Bear. They made a wide explore where they found out dhole, gaur, sun bear and clouded leopard- which are the species that are in the red zone of extinction.
The research included some indigenous people who set up camera traps with trees and they were able to capture numerous a typical species of flora and fauna.
It was cited by Hance that 10% of Bangladesh’s area covers Chittagong Hill Tracts which is the size of Northern Ireland, reserved and inhibited by nearly 11 tribal ethnic groups. They didn’t accept contemporary way of living; rather they still hunt down for their food. These activities are destroying wildlife of Hill Tracts every day. Bangladesh government along with tribal groups in the year 1997 signed a peace treaty; still conflicts remain between them for the last couple of decades. But Istiak Sobhan, a founding member of CCA, did say that the tribal people are the blessing in disguise, who contributed saving biodiversity of the Chittagong Hill Tracts region.
Caeser and his team discovered some pugmarks over there and sent those photographs to Hasan Rahman, who studies wildcats at University of Delaware. Hasan forwarded those to John Goodrich who is a researcher and senior program director of Tiger research community Panthera. John confirmed through the measurement and photo details, that it was a tiger mark. Dr. M. Monirul H. Khan, who is an associate professor of Department of Zoology, Jahangirnagar University, made a rough research on different aspects of wildlife of Chittagong Hill Tracts, said that there might be around 15 tigers in the region based on the conservations with the tribal people. But in past these inhabitants of tiger was huge. According to the wildlife scientists, only 1 last tiger population is left in the Sundarbans- the world’s largest mangrove forest.
Moreover, from Chittagong Hill tracts to the wildlife towards the path of Myanmar, they captured pictures of Himalayan Serow, Leopards, Sambar Deer, Asiatic Golden Cat, Marbled Cat, Barking deer and Dholes-a feral Asian dog.
The most amazing thing that they found out was Arakan forest turtles with a pretty much good population. This is one of the rarest turtle species in the world which was found here.
Despite everything, the wildlife of Bangladesh is diverse, but it is highly endangered. It is high time that our government must take proper steps. One of the tiger experts of Bangladesh, Monirul said that actual fortification by the government is very poor. The wildlife habitat destruction is getting very common. If this isn’t kept in check, then the bio-diversity of beautiful Bangladesh will be destroyed very soon by the false impacts of urbanization and industrial revolution.