The Sal Forest in Tangail is shrinking fast as mindless grabbing and tree felling continue, threatening the existence of this natural treasure and pushing its flora and fauna towards extinction.

While foresters and locals keep playing the blame game for the destruction of a major forest, almost two-thirds or around 80,000 acres of it has been wiped out, according to Forest Department data. 

Once a large, dense jungle and home to a variety of wildlife including tigers, peacocks and langurs, the forest was spread across more than 1,22,876 acres of land in 1925.

Officials say its area is decreasing fast due to years of tree felling and indiscriminate grabbing by both locals as well as influential outsiders who also constructed different structures, including concrete ones, on the forestland.

They get phone calls from powerful people, including top government officials, whenever they take initiatives to reclaim the grabbed land.

Now, natural forest remains on less than 40,000 acres of land while around 38,000 acres of land remains grabbed, said Dr Jahirul Haque, divisional forest officer in Tangail.

The forest now also sees plantations of various fruits and vegetables like pineapple, banana, jujube, guava, mango, lemon, papaya, arum, turmeric and ginger  on grabbed land.  The growers use excessive insecticides and other chemicals, destroying the ecological balance as well as biodiversity.

WHAT FORESTERS SAY
On May 6, foresters recovered 45 logs of Sal (Gajari) trees felled in Harindhara area under Dokhala Range of Madhupur upazila. Earlier, on April 26, some 200 logs were seized in Gargavindapur under Boheratoil Range in Sakhipur upazila.

Abdul Ahad, ranger of Dokhala Range, said both locals and outsiders have destroyed the forest and occupied vast tracts of it. People from ethnic minority communities leased out most of the grabbed forestland to local Muslims or outsiders.

"A local man alone has kept around 250 acres of forest in Madhupur occupied and also raised a private rubber garden on the land," he said.

"A few months ago, locals vandalised my office, and kept the assistant forest conservator confined to his office in retaliation to a drive by foresters to recover a piece of forestland grabbed by a local Garo woman," he said.

Jamal Hossain Talukder, assistant forest conservator (north) of Tangail Forest Department, said they were failing to save the forest due to various factors, including a shortage of workforce and logistics and interference by influential people.

Syndicates of both locals and outsiders have grown guava, jujube and pineapple after grabbing forestland at different places, he said. "Locals do not want the presence of forest officials here at all."

He added, "When we go for recovery of any grabbed forestland, the vested interest groups take different strategies including highlighting the rights of local ethnic communities. Phone calls also come from powerful quarters."

Jahirul, divisional forest officer in Tangail, said, "The parliamentary standing committee on the forest and environment ministry had asked for the list of forestland grabbers. We already sent it to the committee.

"Afterwards we got directives from the ministry to recover the grabbed forestland but the process is getting delayed because of the pandemic."   

He added, "Support from all quarters concerned are needed to save the forest and also recover the grabbed forestland."

Replying to queries over the status of forest areas, he said of the original 1,22,876 acres of forestland, 45,565 acres were in Madhupur, 47,220 acres in Sakhipur, 21,855 acres in Ghatail, 7,576 acres in Mirzapur, and 669 acres in Kalihati.

Of it, 58,206 acres has been declared reserved forest, he said, citing declarations of forest settlement officers.

A social afforestation programme was done on around 28,000 acres and rubber gardening on 10,000 acres of land.

Shaheed Salahuddin Cantonment in Ghatail, Firing Range of Air Force, and Forest Research Institute in Madhupur were established on the remaining 5,000 acres of land, Jahirul added.

WHAT LOCALS SAY
Alik Mree, a local Garo community leader and also general secretary of Bangladeshi Adivasi Chhatra Sangram Parishad, said, "The local indigenous people are not the ones who chop down trees as the forest is like their mother. Yet, hundreds of false forest cases have been filed against them."

He further said, "The poor indigenous people have been cultivating crops on their ancestral land for decades. As many of them are very poor, they leased out their land to others."

He alleged that the foresters were raising an arboretum clearing natural forest at Telki in Madhupur. They were also constructing a guest house and boundary walls on an ancient crematorium of local indigenous people there, he claimed.