The finance minister, Abul Maal Abdul Muhith in April admitted that the forest coverage was nine per cent of the country's total land area, but the forest department continues to claim that 17 per cent of Bangladesh is forested.
The minister when he was speaking as chief guest at the inaugural session of the first Bangladesh Forestry Congress 2011 on April 20 said, 'The forest coverage is nine per cent. It is not 17 per cent.'
In a leaflet, printed on May 31, the forest department, however, states that there are 2,597,252 hectares of forested land in Bangladesh — 17 per cent of the country's total land area. It adds that 1,576,496 hectares — 10.7 per cent of the country's land — is managed by the forest department.
Similar statistics are also set out on the department's web site.
Not only are the forest department statistics in conflict with the finance minister's comment but they also contradict the National Forest and Tree Resources Assessment 2005–2007, which was undertaken by several government agencies including the forest department and the Bangladesh Space Research and Remote Sensing Organisation, which is part of the defence ministry.
Technical support for the research was provided by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation's Forest Resources Development Service.
Whilst the forest department says that Sundarban, the world's largest contiguous natural mangrove, covers an area of 6,01,000 hectares, the inter-ministry assessment found that in fact the forest only covered 4,36,000 hectares.
There are other similar discrepancies. The department claims that there are 1,20,000 hectares of plain-land 'Sal' forest — situated mainly in Gazipur, Tangail, Mymensingh, Sherpur, Jamalpur, Netrakona, Naogaon, Rangpur, Dinajpur and Panchagar — but the study found that in fact it covered 34,000 hectares.
And whilst the forest department says that the hill forests, situated mainly in Chittagang, Coxs Bazar, Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Habiganj and the Chittagong Hill Tracts, covered a total of 6,52,000 hectares, the assessment said that they covered 5,51,000 hectares.
Some experts in the country, however, claim that forest coverage is even less than what is there in the assessment.
M Mahfuzur Rahman, a principal investigator of the botany department in Jahnagirnagar University, claimed that forests only covered six per cent of Bangladesh and that the government assessment was only higher as it counted denuded forest areas.
He said that the government statistics included the denuded forest areas where no one would 'hardly be able to find any tree and it includes mountain area.'
'Whenever the forest department claims that the country has 17 per cent of total forest, it actually is talking about forest land, but in the forest land, you can find land completely denuded of forest, with people living there making houses, and there are mountains completely denuded of trees,' said Niaz Ahmed Khan, the country representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
'I have seen a four storey building in Bhawal under the protected forest of the forest department,' he added.
He claims that the forest department statistics are based on unorganised and unscientific studies.
Numerous attempts by New Age seeking a response from the chief conservator of forest, Ishtiaque Uddin Ahmed, went unanswered. 'I am too busy,' he said.
source:New Age
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