Steps must be taken to protect St Martin’s Island from complete extinction

THE country’s only coral island, Saint Martin’s in Cox’s Bazar, continues to be polluted unabated as the government has failed to put in place an appropriate management mechanism for protection of the island. Green activists and researchers said though the biodiversity-rich island in the Bay of Bengal was declared an Ecologically Critical Area in 1999, the concerned authorities are yet to take any pragmatic step for the management, conservation and restoration of the island.
 The tree-covered areas of the island are also shrinking while both the population and tourists are increasing. The new hotels and infrastructure sprouting up are putting extra pressure on the island’s biodiversity. The unique natural features of the island are being destroyed. St. Martin’s is a small island in the sea, 120 km from Cox’s Bazar. According to official data, the area of the island is 13 square kilometres. However, researchers said its size is 8 square kilometers, reveals a recent study.
The study conducted by two teachers and a former student of Dhaka University has revealed this picture of coral depletion on the island. The study was also published in the international Ocean Science Journal. The island does not have even one-third of the coral it had four decades ago. One of the authors of the research paper said, “If necessary measures are not taken, St. Martin’s Island will lose all its coral completely by 2045. Coral will only be found in museums then.”
Every year from September-October to March-April, tourists visit the island. According to the study, less than 200 tourists a year visited the island during 1996-1997 that increased to almost 50,000 now. According to local estimates, there are now 124 hotels, motels and cottages on the island. The population is about 9,760. However, during the tourist season, an additional 2,500 people stay at St. Martin’s Island for a few months to manage hotels, motels and cottages.
The study identified a number of man-made causes for environmental pollution and biodiversity loss in St. Martin’s Island. These include uncontrolled tourism, poor waste management of residential hotels, dumping of waste in seawater, rock extraction, coral extraction and widespread use of fishing nets in coastal areas.
To save our only coral island as one of the national resources from complete extinction, it is time to take steps to conserve the environment and biodiversity of Saint Martin’s, also a popular tourist attraction.