Stop ravaging our reserve forests

Despite the government's many pledges to protect the environment, yet another reserve forest has fallen victim to encroachment. This time, grabbers have razed a section of Tulatoli Reserve Forest in Chattogram to build houses, among other structures. At this point, such incidents may have become routine, but we must ask: is our nature so dispensable in the eyes of the authorities?

According to a report by this daily, the grabbers have already cleared around 300 square feet of the forest, home to many species of plants and wildlife. Around 30 trees and a hill's chunk have thus vanished. One tiny bit of consolation is that the Forest Department has filed a case against four people. But this may do little to deter encroachers, especially when government agencies themselves try to take over reserve forests every time an opportunity presents itself.

One may recall how, last year, the Roads and Highways Department sought 174 acres to widen a road through the Ramgarh-Sitakunda Reserve Forest in Chattogram. Not one to be left behind, the Local Government Engineering Department also planned to build a five-kilometre road through the Ramu reserve forest, months after the government handed over 20 acres of the same forest to Bangladesh Football Federation for building a training facility. Thus, from 2011 to 2020, over 9,000 acres of Cox's Bazar's forestland was handed over to government entities, and till 2021, over 1.60 lakh individuals and organisations grabbed 2.57 lakh acres of forests across the country. It makes us wonder whether the government can really achieve its target to stop deforestation by 2030.

All this brings us to the subject of what we're sacrificing in the name of development. As concrete creeps into forestland, so do humans, and their arrival leads to the loss of habitats, meaning a death sentence for trees and wildlife. Currently, no laws of the land, not the Forest Act, not the Environment Conservation Act, not even the constitution, are being able to prevent this slaughter. We, therefore, urge the government to properly enforce the regulations in place to ensure that no one can take over our forests.