Huge mangrove forests at stake

Thousands of acres of mangrove forests, created to shield lakhs from natural disasters in the chars (islands) in Bhola and Patuakhali, face serious threats with the district administrations leasing out the chars to landless people and shrimp cultivators.
At the district administration level, the process of land allocation under the national programme of rehabilitating landless peasants is completed without any consultation with the forest department. Since independence, the department has created 1.27 lakh acres of mangrove forest along the coastal areas of Bhola on the basis of a master plan.
On June 23, over 200 people invaded Char Bestin mangrove forest in Patuakhali, chopped down more than 30,000 trees and cleared the area of thick vegetation to make a human settlement there. They claimed to have the forest allocated to them by the district administration several years ago. When Rangabali police intervened, the invaders retreated, vowing to establish their "rights" on the forest very soon.
On June 11, only hours after a Bhola court directed the authorities to abide by the forest and environment laws, groups of people chopped down thousands of trees inside a mangrove forest and a designated wildlife sanctuary for building a road in the remote island of Char Kukrimukri.
Lack of coordination between the district administrations and the forest department will cause further damage to the mangrove forests in the coastal areas, it is feared.
The district administration of Patuakhali has so far allocated land to thousands of poor people in the chars thoroughly afforested over the years. Following the Char Bestin incident, the district officials and Bhola Divisional Forest Office recently met to resolve the issue but failed.
Shah Alam Sarder, additional deputy commissioner (revenue) of Patuakhali, told The Daily Star that a team from the administration and the forest department would visit the coastal areas to assess the situation.
“We (the district administration and the forest office) have decided to work together to earmark the mangrove forests and also farm areas for the landless people,” Shah Alam said.
The mighty Bura Gouranga, an estuary of the Meghna and Tetulia rivers by the Bay of Bengal, is dotted with 50 chars having 1.27 lakh acres of mangrove forests. These dense forests stand as a great barrier between the Bay and the mainland of Bhola.
“Following several devastating calamities, there was a national consensus in the seventies that we require 3.60 lakh acres of mangrove forest in Bhola alone as an effective barrier to cyclones,” said Sayed Ali, divisional forest officer of Bhola.
Whenever a new shoal emerges, the nursery section of forest department plants 4,444 mangrove saplings on every hectare of land. The saplings include sundari, hartal, keora, shoila and kakra, added Sayed.
As per a 1977gazette notification, the forest department is the custodian of all shoals rising from the rivers in the coastal areas, Sayed said.
As soon as a char begins to appear on the river, the forest department immediately earmarks it for planting trees. The trees are mostly species brought in through a painstaking process of collecting seeds from the largest mangrove forest of Sundarbans and germinating those in the nursery.
Interestingly, another land hungry quarter also gets busy with the appearance of shoals -- the surveyors of the local land office-- providing information to the district administration on the status of emerging shoals in the Bay or in the vast rivers flowing into it.
For instance, the surveyors go to an emerging shoal when it is still under about one foot of water and report back that the shoal is habitable. They draw a map manually and name the shoal, and then recommend allocating it for rehabilitation of the landless peasants.
“Very often, they furnish wrong information and get the district administration allocate the shoal to landless peasants on the basis of a list already prepared by the upazila level landless peasants' management committee,” said a forest department official requesting anonymity.
Each of the landless peasants, having an allocation of around two acres of land for living and farming, just wait for the shoals to become liveable. A landless peasant from Kochhopia, who was allocated two acres of land at Char Bestink, said he had to pay the surveyor Tk 10,000 to qualify for the allocation.
As the shoal slowly rises above the water, the forest department goes ahead with its usual plantation programme without the knowledge that the district administration concerned has already allocated the area for rehabilitation of the landless.
Sources pointed out that the onslaught on Char Bestin forest is a glaring example of how things could go wrong due to the lack of coordination between the district administration and the forest department.