Forestry Products
Meet Bangladesh - Bangladesh 101:
Wood is the main fuel for cooking and other domestic requirements. It is not surprising that population pressure has had an adverse effect on the indigenous forests. By 1980 only about 16 percent of the land was forested, and forests had all but disappeared from the densely populated and intensively cultivated deltaic plain. Aid organizations in the mid-1980s began looking into the possibility of stimulating small-scale forestry to restore a resource for which there was no affordable substitute.
The largest areas of
forest are in the Chittagong Hills and the Sundarbans. The evergreen and
deciduous forests of the Chittagong Hills cover more than 4,600 square
kilometers and are the source of teak for heavy construction and boat building,
as well as other forest products. Domesticated elephants are still used to haul
logs. The Sundarbans, a tidal mangrove forest covering nearly 6,000 square
kilometers along the Bay of Bengal, is the source of
timber used for a variety of purposes, including pulp for the domestic paper
industry, poles for electric power distribution, and leaves for thatching for
dwellings. There is also a profitable semiwild honey industry based in the
Sundarbans for those intrepid or desperate enough to risk it. Not only are the
bees sometimes uncooperative, but the Sundarbans is also the home of the Royal
Bengal Tiger, and several instances are reported each year of honey collectors
or lumbermen being killed by man-eaters.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|