India and Bangladesh to sign a protocol to protect the Sundarban

Bangladesh is rewarded with many of natural beauties where sundarban, the largest mangrove forest of the world, is the most attractive for its natural beauty and its contribution to the lives 17 crore people of the country. 

Conservation of sundarban is very priority issue for the country to save bio-diversity inside of the tidal forest and to save lives of people from natural calamity like flood and upsurge of sea water from Bay of Bengal.

Here, the Royal Bengal Tiger, deer, pythons, different flora & fauna of mangrove forest land and different fishes inside of canals are very marvelous & amazing to the tourists. 

India is soon to sign a protocol with neighboring Bangladesh in a bid to protect the Sundarbans which is part of both the countries, sources said on Tuesday.

"Details are being formulated and soon both the countries will be signatories to the protocol. The aim is to protect the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world," the sources said.

The Sundarbans lies in the vast delta on the Bay of Bengal formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers across southern Bangaldesh and the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

The seasonally flooded forests lie inland from the mangrove forests on the coastal fringe and covers 10,000 square kilometers of which about 6,000 are in Bangladesh.

The Sundarbans also serves a crucial function as a protective barrier for the millions of inhabitants in and around West Bengal' s capital Kolkata against the floods that result from the cyclones that are a regular occurrence on this coast.

The natural honey is also collected from sundarban. Many of the Bangladeshi people go to the deep of sundarban to collect the very sacred sweets from this forest.  

Hundreds of deer are also seen here inside of the forests and beside of the canals specially. The famous tigers used to live from eating of those.

Tourists from hundreds of countries of the world also visit this tidal forest to see the beauty of forest where trees are grown from the roots of other plants. It happens due to tides continue through the canals situated in side of the forest.The canals are also saturated many times from this tidal waves.

Many of the people collect huge amount of woods from this forest which is beyond the capacity of regeneration of growth of the forest which is considered a major threat to this world largest mangrove forest. This happens due to over burden of  people in coastal area of the country. 

Imran Hasan Palash, a sincere citizen of Bangladesh born at Koikhali, a place very close to the sundarban now completed his Masters Degree from a public university of the country in Geography & Environmental Science expressed his apprehension on sundarban. Talking to this writer he told that the inhabitants living near sundarban are work-less. They have the only option to collect wood or honey from sundarban, he added. So the extra pressure of the peoples' feeding goes on sundarban, Palash said. It is time to take immediate measures like the substitute way of employment of the people living near sundarban.            

Tourists from different countries have been visiting at different parts of sundarban over the years. The potentiality of tourism industry centering sundarban is very high. The peoples collecting their lives from sundarban harming it may earn many more if this is made as the world's most attractive tourists' spot. It may be done only through development of law and order situation and reaching the correct information about the gravity of sundarban to the world.

According to estimation, the Sundarbans is home to 425 species of wildlife, including 300 species of birds and 42 species of mammals, as well as the Royal Bengal Tiger.

Over 3.5 million people live in the Sundarbans ecologically critical area, with no permanent settlement. Among them, about 1.2 million people directly depend on Sundarbans for their livelihoods. Most of these people are wood cutters/golpatta collectors, fishermen, crab and shell collectors, honey collectors and shrimp fry collectors. Many of them are women and children.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in its recent study titled 'Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh's Sundarbans Mangroves' said that one of the world's largest tiger populations could disappear by the end of this century as rising sea levels caused by climate change destroy their habitat in the Sundarbans. The cyclone Sidr has about one fourth of the four lakh plus hectares of forest area of the world heritage site killing around 3,113 people. Other climate change induced disasters like Aila have destroyed the natural resources of the Sundarbans to a great extent. The ecosystem of the forest has been disrupted and huge wildlife including a good numbers of Royal Bengal tigers has been killed.