Mountfort in Sylhet
Recently I wrote about the visionary and influential English conservationist Guy Mountfort's visit to Sundarban in 1967. Mountfort, the founder of World Wildlife Fund, wrote a book called The Vanishing Jungle about his expedition to wilderness areas of erstwhile Pakistan. At the time of writing that column, I worked off a photocopy of one chapter of the book, but recently I obtained the book itself, elegantly bound in cloth with a golden tiger on the cover.
In the book, in addition to Sundarban, Mountfort devotes a chapter to his visit to the jungles of Sylhet. As with the Sundarban chapter, I read it eagerly, mentally comparing my experiences today in Sylhet's wilderness with that of the foreigner fifty years ago.
Some parts of his description ring true today. Copious bird species in Sylhet's forests were different than he had seen elsewhere in the country, which he attributed to the terrain being closer to the high rain forests of Assam. Thus, for example, he saw five types of Bulbul and three new (for him) species of Flycatchers during his first hour at a forest guest house in Moulvi Bazar.
Other parts sound like a long-ago fairy tale. He observes a Giant Fig tree at the entrance to a forest, counting no less than fifteen Lineated Barbets, a dozen Blue-Throated Barbets and eighty Green Pigeons feasting on its fruits. Although I have seen all these fruit-eating birds on fig and banyan trees, I have never seen such large numbers: perhaps a dozen pigeons, and one or two barbets at best.
But his description of what happened next made me jealous. As he watches, a Shikra (bird of prey) alights on the tree. Within a few minutes it snatches a plump Lineated Barbet in its claws. All the other birds take off with a roar of wings. The Shikra plucks and eats the Barbet as a trail of its sad green feathers floats to the ground.
This would be a rare or impossible sight today. Our bird population has thinned considerably. Our raptors have perhaps become more secretive, seldom eating their prey in the open. And large trees like that Wild Fig have become rare.
I was surprised to discover that this was not Mountfort's first visit to Sylhet. During the Second World War, while serving in the British Army, he had driven through Sylhet to fight in the Burma campaign in Assam.
What saddened him was that, during the War (1944-ish), he had seen one unbroken forest range covering the Sylhet area and stretching through Assam all the way to the Chinese border. But by the time he returned in 1967, that forest was virtually gone. Mountfort was shocked at the way the ancient trees had been decimated to make room for paddy fields and tea garden expansion.
Luckily, he found one patch still standing - a remnant of the forest he had seen in 1944. The two days he and his team spent in this patch comprised their “most fascinating period” of the entire two-month expedition to wilderness areas of erstwhile Pakistan. This forest remains mostly intact today, despite slow but persistent encroachment. I am talking about Kalenga, one of very few areas of primary forests in Bangladesh. Visitors to the Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary in Habiganj today can get a taste of the paradise we once had and lost.
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