FOREST PROTECTED AREA SYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN BANGLADESH

Despite of being an exceptionally biodiversity rich country, the forest coverage of Bangladesh is declining at an alarming rate. Declaration and management of protected areas in this regard is one of the efforts from government side to tackle the loss of biodiversity. The limited numbers of forest-protected areas (FPA), established to conserve the dwindling forest biodiversity of the country with high pressure on them for timber, nontimber forest products, and fuelwood makes their management challenging. Moreover, most of the FPAs of the country declared only in the recent decades with very limited infrastructure, manpower and policy support for monitoring and governance. Some peoplecentred approaches for the management of FPAs and alternative livelihood and income generation subsidies although made available through a few project interventions, their number are still inadequate and performance remains less than satisfactory. This chapter provides a critical review of the FPAs of Bangladesh looking at their role in biodiversity conservation, management challenges, and key lessons from previous management interventions with recommendations for the future. It has been revealed that the FPA system of Bangladesh still poorly represents the diverse forest ecosystems with relatively small forest size and lack of corridors for the movement of wildlife. There are ample * Corresponding author: Sharif A. Mukul. Email address: s.mukul@uq.edu.au. Preprints (www.preprints.org) | NOT PEER-REVIEWED | Posted: 18 November 2016 doi:10.20944/preprints201611.0101.v1


INTRODUCTION
Tropical forests are the home to about 70 percent of the world's plants and animals and are important for providing critical ecosystem goods and services (Gardner et al. 2009;Laurance 2007).More than 500 million people live in tropical forests and are somehow dependent on it for their livelihood (Byron and Arnold 1999).Despite the significant role of tropical forests in people's life and environment, deforestation rates are high in the tropical region resulting in a rapid loss of biodiversity and wild habitats (Geist and Lambin 2002).Tropical deforestation is also one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emission (GHG), accounting for almost 20 percent of the total anthropogenic GHG emission and a major contributor to global warming (Baccini et al. 2012;Houghton 2012).
Establishment of protected area (PA) is one of the key global strategies that aimed to reverse tropical forests and biodiversity loss (Geldmann et al. 2013;Laurance et al. 2012;Andam et al. 2008;DeFries et al. 2007).Globally, PA networks are expanding rapidly and they now cover nearly 15% of the earth's surface (UNEP-WCMC 2016;Geldmann et al. 2015).Ideally, PA systems are designed to restrict or reduce the anthropogenic pressures in areas of high biological diversity (Venter et al. 2014;Watson et al. 2014;Saout et al. 2013).Other than their key role as a refuge of declining level of forests and biodiversity they are also efficient in providing important ecosystem services like climate regulation, groundwater recharge, erosion control, pollination, etc. (Gray et al. 2016;Beaudrot et al. 2016;Sohel et al. 2015;Mukul 2014).
In many parts of the tropics, only by establishing PAs, however, does not bring the desired conservation outcome making the PAs system ineffective (Geldmann et al. 2015(Geldmann et al. , 2013;;Clark et al. 2013).This is largely due to the exclusion of local people in PA governance and absence of alternative income generation opportunities to people who have traditionally been dependent on forests for sustaining their livelihoods (Mukul et al. 2016(Mukul et al. , 2014(Mukul et al. , 2012a)).Further to that, land-use change around PAs, agricultural expansion, illegal logging, fuelwood, and fodder collection making many PAs vulnerable particularly in the developing tropics (Mondal and Nagendra 2011;Karanth and DeFries 2010;DeFries et al. 2007;Ervin 2003).
Bangladesh, despite being exceptionally endowed with rich biological resources, has one of the lowest per capita forest lands in the world (Mukul and Quazi 2009).The country has also experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation in south Asia (Poffenberger 2000).High population density, rich biological diversity, limited forest cover and rural people's dependence on forests are some of the major challenges of biodiversity conservation in Bangladesh (Mukul et al. 2012a).
Here we provide an overview of the forest protected area (FPA) systems of Bangladesh.The chapter begins with describing the current situation of forests and biodiversity in Bangladesh followed by the status and coverage of existing FPAs and their historical perspectives.We then discuss the present management of FPAs in the country, threats to FPA's and their management challenges.We finally provide some recommendations and guidelines for better management of FPA's in Bangladesh.Our study builds on the experiences and outcomes of the previous study of Mukul et al. (2008) by providing more updated information and analysis.We also reviewed relevant recent literature covering various aspects of FPA's management in Bangladesh.We believe that our study is important for the diverse stakeholders dealing with forests and protected areas management and biodiversity conservation in the country.

FOREST ECOSYSTEMS AND BIODIVERSITY OF BANGLADESH
Bangladesh has a total forest area of about 2.6 million hectares, of which 1.52 million hectares are managed by the country's Forest Department (FD) (Mukul et al. 2014a).Table 1 below shows the major forest types of Bangladesh with their share to country's forest land managed by the FD and total land area.Hill forests comprise majority of the country's forests area, followed by mangrove forests and plain land sal (Shorea robusta) forests (Khan et al. 2007).Hill forests are located in the eastern part of the country, evergreen to semi-evergreen in nature and dominated by dipterocarps (Figure 1).The mangrove forests of the Sundarbans and mangrove plantations are located mainly in the southern coastal part of the country.The dominant species here are sundri (Heritiers fomes), gewa (Excoecaria agallocha), goran (Ceriops decandra) and keora (Sonneratia apetala) (Mukhopadhyay et al. 2015).The majority of the hill and Sal forests in the country, however, are severely degraded and is without any true vegetation cover (Rahman et al. 2009).
Approximately 5,700 angiosperm species, 29 orchids, 3 gymnosperms and 1,700 pteridophytes have recorded from Bangladesh (Firoz et al. 2004).About 2,260 plant species have so far been reported alone from the Chittagong Hill Tracts region, which falls within the greater Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot (MoEF 1993).Similarly, the country also possesses rich wildlife diversity.At least 138 mammal species, 566 species of birds, 167 reptiles and 49 amphibian species are available in Bangladesh (Table 2; IUCN 2015).The distribution of major wildlife across the different forest types of Bangadesh is unvenely distributed (Figure 1).The Sundarbans is the world's largest mangrove forest with the largest remaining habitats of Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris) in the world.The Sundarbans is also home to around 334 species of plants, 49 mammals, 59 reptiles, 8 amphibians and 315 species of bird in the country (Aziz and Paul 2015).The hill forests and Sal forests bordering the neighboring India and Myanmar is the home of Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) -the largest terrestrial animal in Asia (Alamgir et al. 2015).These forests are also very rich in avifaunal diversity.Several endangered primate species including the western hoolock gibbon (Hoolock hoolock) are also common here.Patchy vegetation and lack of corridors, however, making these forest ecosystems unfavorable for country's remaining wildlife.
In the country, a large number of wildlife species are currently threatened with extinction (Table 2).Already, 19 species of birds, 11 species of mammals and one reptile species went extinct from the country (IUCN 2015).In addition, Bangladesh National Herbarium identified 106 vascular plant species with risks of various degrees of extinction (Khan et al. 2001).

FOREST PROTECTED AREAS OF BANGLADESH
The history of forest protected areas in Bangladesh is rather recent, started only in 1980's (Chowdhury and Koike 2010).Currently, there are 34 FPAs covering nearly 0.27 million hectares of forests land managed by country's FD (Table 3).This estimate, however, excludes 4 marine and coastal protected areas that were aimed at protecting the marine and/or aquatic biodiversity of the country.The FPAs of the country represents 17.5% of Bangladesh's forest lands and approximately 1.8% of country's total land area.These figures are below the global standard of FPA coverage.
Most of the FPAs of Bangladesh established only during the recent decade.Figure 2 and 3 shows the temporal changes in FPA's in country in terms of their number and coverage.About 55% of the FPAs of the country started their journey only in the present decade.This is largely due to growing focus and consensus on conservation in the country.In terms of coverage, there has been a large increase in FPA between 1996-2000 although it was due to the deceleration of three wildlife sanctuaries in the Sundarbans mangrove forests of Bangladesh.Among the existing forest protected areas, 17 are national parks and 17 are wildlife sanctuaries, representing respectively 17% and 83% of the total area under the FPA's system in the country.Figure 4 illustrates the current area under FPAs in different forest types of Bangladesh.About 24.1% of the mangrove forests are under FPA's network, while it is only 12.8% in case of the hill forests.The Sal forests although highly degraded in nature, poorly represented by country's FPA networks accounting only 12.6%.The spatial distribution of FPAs of the country is shown in Figure 5.Many of the FPA's are located in areas that area away from major forest areas needing immediate conservation.Moreover, the size of the many FPA's is very small and inadequate to support the existing wildlife population.For instance, the size of both Ramsagar National Park and Char Kukri-Mukri Wildlife Sanctuary is less than 50 ha.

MANAGEMENT OF THE FOREST PROTECTED AREAS
Bangladesh Forest Department is responsible for the management of country's forest protected areas.Purely ecological focus and exclusion of local forest-dependent people from the management of the FPAs, however, has been one of the major issues in the country (Mukul et al. 2012a).Poor recognition of local and indigenous people's traditional forests rights and practices has in many cases led conflicts and mistrust between forests protected area managers and local forest users (Mukul 2008).In recent years, some people-centred approaches commonly known as co-management have been promoted in several FPA of the country.The aim of co-management is to improve the management effectiveness of FPAs by involving local people in its governance.Apart from enabling active participation of people in FPAs governance, co-management also offers some direct and indirect benefits to the local people that help to sustain their livelihoods (Rashid et al. 2013a;Chowdhury et al. 2014aChowdhury et al. , 2009;;Uddin et al. 2007).
The co-management was initiated in 2003 in five pilot forest protected areas (i.e., Lawachara National Park, Satchari National Park, Rema-Kalenga Wildlife Sanctuary, Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary and Teknaf Wildlife Sanctuary) through an initiative called Nishorgo Support Project (NSP), with active support from the USAID.This project was further scaled up as Integrated Protected Area Co-management (IPAC) and currently functioning under the project called Climate-Resilient Ecosystems and Livelihoods (CREL) (Rashid et al. 2013b).These projects provided local communities access to different alternative income generating options and livelihood support in order to reduce pressure on adjacent forest protected areas.These supports included but not limited to training and microcredit for nursery raising, poultry and cattle rearing, small enterprise development, training for ecotour guide, etc. (Mukul et al. 2012a).Livelihood supports includes buffer zone management, support for improved cooking stove for domestic use, etc.In certain cases, local community members were also engaged in forest patrolling.These initiatives, although very limited in terms of support and beneficiaries, substantially reduce the local dependency on forests and illegal forest activities like illegal logging (Mukul et al. 2014b(Mukul et al. , 2012a)).

THREATS TO FOREST PROTECTED AREAS
The major challenges and/or threats to forest protected areas in Bangladesh are being listed in Table 4. Like other South Asian countries, the high population density creates immense pressure on country's forest protected areas (Clark et al. 2013).A large number of people in the country live near or within the FPAs and largely depends on various forests products.Land encroachment for settlements and agriculture is is also quite common and one of the direct threats imposed by the growing population (Masum et al. 2016;Rahman et al. 2016;Sohel et al. 2015;Islam and Sato 2012).The high requirement of firewood for domestic cooking also causing forests degradation in country's FPAs (Chowdhury et al. 2014b;Uddin and Mukul 2007).Illegal logging, hunting of wild animals for dietary consumption, wildlife poaching, and collection of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are some other threats to FPAs of the country (Mukul et al. 2016(Mukul et al. , 2014b(Mukul et al. , 2010;;Chowdhury et al. 2014b;Islam and Sato 2012;Khan et al. 2009) (Figure 6).Climate change and resulting sea level rise, alien invasive species, unplanned ecotourism, road networks within the forests are some indirect threats to FPA's of the country (Alamgir et al. 2015;Mukhopadhyay et al. 2015;Uddin et al. 2013;Rana et al. 2010;Biswas et al. 2007;Mukul et al. 2006).

CONCLUSION
The conservation effectiveness of protected areas depends on the effective management of surrounding landscapes of which they are a part (Chazdon et al. 2008;Hansen and DeFries 2007).The majority of the lands inside South Asia's forest protected areas are somehow altered by human activities and habitat conversions has not been adequately contained even after the legal initiatives taken by forest department through the declaration of protected areas (Clark et al. 2013).Many of the forest protected areas are also established in locations which are away from strategically important sites for biodiversity conservation (Barnes et al. 2016;Venter et al. 2014;Saout et al. 2013).The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Aichi Target 11 recently calls for a substantial increase in global protected area coverage by the year 2020, and to make a realistic progress towards this goal there is an urgent need to substantially enhance the management of existing protected areas with systematic conservation planning and management (Watson et al. 2014;Wilson et al. 2007).
Overall, we found that the current extent of forest protected areas in Bangladesh, both in terms of number and coverage is, inadequate to protect the rapidly dwindling biodiversity of the country.The forest protected areas also do not sufficiently represent the different forest ecosystems needing conservation.The lack of infrastructure and capacity of the Bangladesh Forest Department, limited involvement of, and support to local people (mainly through some project interventions) also obscuring the long-term sustainability and success of country's forest protected area systems.
To make the forest protected area systems efficient in conserving Bangladesh's unique biodiversity and ecosystems, strategical development is necessary with appropriate representation of critical wildlife habitats and corridors within the forest protected area network.A separate institutional body for FPA's management under the FD, standardized indicators for monitoring the success of FPAs, improvement in local capacity and funding, and effective involvement of local people in FPA's governance are crucial.Transboundary management and monitoring of forest protected areas are also necessary since the majority of the country's forest areas are bordered with neighboring India and Myanmar.Incorporation of ecosystem services (e.g., carbon sequestration, flood protection, etc.) framework in the FPA management and payments for ecosystem services could be some other avenues for future expansion and development in the country.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Temporal changes in the number of forests protected areas of Bangladesh.

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Temporal changes in forests protected area coverage of Bangladesh.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Representation of various forest ecosystems by protected areas in Bangladesh.

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Location map of the forest protected areas of Bangladesh.

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Some threats to forest protected areas of the country: a) road network within the national park, b) illegal logging, c) invasive alien species and d) NTFPs collection from inside the national park.

Table 2 . Present status of inland and resident vertebrates in Bangladesh
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