Beyond safari parks: Rethinking conservation investment in Bangladesh

Proper and prudent investment in the welfare of wildlife and wilderness is fundamental to any country's advancement.

And safari parks are often considered a good way to achieve that goal.

Bangladesh, which already has two safari parks, has started contemplating its third one in a remote bordering tropical forest.

Upon hearing the news, I switched off the feelings of a field biologist and tried to appraise this development by weighing its planned cost against the expected benefits. Can a safari park help meet any of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?

Does it offer resilience against the rapidly changing climate? Is a safari park a nature-based solution (NbS)?

The selected site for the safari park is located approximately 60km northeast of Moulvibazar, Lathitila, under the Juri forest range of Sylhet Forest Division. Lathitila belongs to the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot — extremely rugged, stone-strewn, and continuous with the border of southern Assam, India.

There is another big caveat: the African and Indian safaris we are used to seeing in documentaries, and some of us might have had the luck to visit, are entirely different. Have you heard of any safari in a humid, tropical, rugged forest?

In a previous conversation with The Business Standard, Enam Ul Haque, an avid conservationist and founder of Bangladesh Bird Club, stressed, ''A safari park is set for amusement and educational purposes. In a sense, it is an extended version of a zoo which should be established near a locality, not in a bordering, remote forest.''

Several eminent citizens and conservation professionals later echoed the thoughts of this year's Ekushey Padak winner.

For such an enlarged version of a zoo, the whole project requires Tk870.90 crore ($79.33 million). The first phase, scheduled to commence this January, received approval in November 2023 from the government. It is worth noting that while the new safari park is tentatively set for completion by 2026, the one in Cox's Bazar has yet to reach full fruition even after decades.

Moreover, if wildlife conservation is the main goal, Bangladesh can invest this money in a myriad of ways. The benefit would be thousand-fold, if not millions: aligning with international commitments, securing climate safety and associated costs, and ensuring green Bangladesh with human-wildlife cohabitation, just to name a few.

In the current parliament, we are lucky to have rows of celebrity politicians. We have Ferdous Ahmed who has voiced support for conservation of the Ganges dolphins. We have Asaduzzaman Noor; in and around his constituency in Nilphamari, leopards still roam (but most sadly get lynched to death). We have both the current and the former captain of our national cricket team who bear the crest of the Bengal tiger and can potentially be the ambassadors of tiger conservation. These personalities hold immense influence to sway public perception of wildlife.

Patronising research-driven activity

''Lathitila is a dead forest that needs rescue from land grabbers,'' this was the common reasoning behind setting up a safari park. Both in feasibility studies and several recent peer-reviewed publications, the forest turns out to be a host for threatened mammals such as small-clawed otters, fishing cats, golden cats, binturongs, grey peacock pheasants, etc.

It is the only forest in the Sylhet Division that has wild Asian elephants. The fund should be spent in studying these animals and similar places suffering from similar misconceptions.

What happens when studies are inadequate and the lack of skills are pervasive? A 2022 news published in The Business Standard highlighted an example, ''natural forests in Rajkandi Reserve were cut down for commercial woodlots, including Acacia trees, with climate funds - aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of climate change.'' The reserve is home to Asiatic black bears.

The new safari park promises several breeding facilities for several threatened species that very rarely breed in any zoo. But, at the same time, it also envisions importing visitor attractions such as rhinos, crocodiles, lions, etc. Shouldn't the money be spent on understanding the breeding ecology first? We can also spend it on learning what our forests love to have to fight climate change.

Strengthening wildlife rescue and rehabilitation operations

In recent years, wildlife rescue operations have sped up to a great extent. However, manpower and equipment have not improved in tandem.

There is also a lack of coordination between customs and Forest Department personnel in managing illegal and unapproved trade in wildlife.

Exotic wildlife and corals included under Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) schedules are pouring in. In addition to the shortage of adept hands, rescue operations of small carnivore mammals (jackals, fishing cats), snakes (python, rat snake, cobra), birds (openbill, egrets, adjutants), etc. are hampered by the lack of proper rescue equipment. I remember one civet died en route from a village to forest department custody in Panchagraph because it was carried in a rice sack.

Bangladesh has currently no plans to update any wildlife rehabilitation facilities. In 2021, a master plan was drafted to modernise the Dhaka Zoo with a tentative budget of Tk1,500 crore ($136.5). But there have been no updates on that development.

This is one ideal sector for investment. Imagine the ripple effect that all outposts of the Forest Department could have on positive human-wildlife interaction (and, therefore, green Bangladesh) had they been adequately manned and properly equipped.

Harmonising human-wildlife coexistence

Speaking of human-wildlife interaction, Bangladesh is going through the nadir. Anything unfamiliar to the public eye — be it elephants, leopards, nilgais or peacocks — suffers from public retaliation, and often gets killed, eaten or forcefully removed.

There are instances of sick vultures eaten as an elixir. There are cases when vultures died from eating poisoned goat carcasses that were baited in the first place to kill jackals. The relationship is a mess.

Perhaps, we can work on improving this ever-deteriorating situation. Amid all the negativity, to mitigate human-elephant conflict, the Forest Department recently released a skit cast by eminent actor Fazlur Rahman Babu.

But this is too rare of an effort. In the current parliament, we are lucky to have rows of celebrity politicians. We have Ferdous Ahmed who has voiced support for conservation of the Ganges dolphins. We have Asaduzzaman Noor; in and around his constituency in Nilphamari, leopards still roam (but most sadly get lynched to death).  We have both the current and the former captain of our national cricket team who bear the crest of the Bengal tiger and can potentially be the ambassadors of tiger conservation.

These personalities hold immense influence to sway public perception of wildlife. Rather than some fancied parks, we better coordinate our efforts for this cause.

Expansion of protected area network

After 2010, there has not been a single protected area in the hill forests. Instead, the loss of reserve forests has skyrocketed. Forests were allocated for football academies and made way for roads and rail tracks.

We saw fish farms inside forests. We saw administrative units being declared inside protected areas. The Inani National Park was rebranded to Sheikh Jamal Inani National Park. But there is no new protected area.

Similar observations can be made for wetlands. Bangladesh is losing wetlands at an unprecedented rate. Except for Baikka Beel and Tanguar Haor, we do not have a single wetland or marsh outside the Sundarbans that is protected and recognised under any international standard.

Bangladesh is home to hoards of migratory birds and wetland-dependent species (fishing cats, otters). Wetlands and rivers are the heart of Bangladesh and deserve better treatment.

Independent government-run unit

All these points, if put on a logframe, might converge in one direction. Bangladesh needs its independent wildlife division. In India, there is the Wildlife Institute of India. In Sri Lanka, it is the Department of Wildlife Conservation. In Nepal, they have the National Trust for Nature Conservation.

On behalf of the governments, these units carry out research and conservation, and produce world-class conservation leaders. Bangladesh is in dire need of a similar framework — a much bigger priority than merely three non-profit safari parks soaking up public money.

To save forests and wildlife, it is not a feasible move to establish a safari park — although the previous minister for our Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change suggested the opposite.

But the present has ushered in a bright horizon. We are hoping for the best era Bangladesh will ever experience in conservation investment.