THE Madhupur National Park is losing its natural façade due to destruction of wild-friendly environment. Land grabbers and loggers are destroying the forest forcing animals to disappear. There is no rush of animals including tigers and bears in deep forest and open areas where animals one used to roam around eating leafs, dancing a flock and coming to the touch of visitors in the natural park.
It appears that the homes to wild animals have is rapidly disappearing with destruction of plants and neglect of forest officials and keepers of the park. Wild fruits and herbal trees are also disappearing fast, causing an acute food crisis for the handful of primates and birds still live. Once locals gathered wild fruits, edible leaves and plants, and medicinal herbs and shrubs, including Bohera, Haritaki, Amloki, Dumur, Anai Gota, Joina Gota and Tithi Jam from this forest. What is distressed is that this forest is declining day by day and of huge scarcity of wild fruits, edible leaves and plants, and medicinal herbs and shrubs. The lax monitoring and negligence of forest authority have led to the extinction of wild animals, wild fruits, leaves and plants from this forest.
Report said that wild fruits and herbal plants are among 36 varieties of trees which have become almost nonexistent from Madhupur forest, posing threats to its biodiversity. Mostly forestland grabbers are very much responsible for the disappearances of the fruits and herbal trees from the forest. So, due to shortage of wild fruits, birds are starving, which leads to their extinction vehemently. But nobody is going forward to fight against these forestland grabbers. Report also said that once spread over 45,000 acres of land, Madhupur forest has now shrunk to only 8,000 acres due to indiscriminate cutting down and stealing of trees and encroachment. Since loggers are powerful people and closer to the incumbent, the law enforcers are not taking a close look at such breach of law; except where they have been asked to intervene. We have laws for conservation of forest and protect environment but their application is limited. What appears most alarming is the logging of trees in this forest by criminal gangsters who operate under the cover of locally influential people. Such activities are regularly causing erosion of land degrading the soil structure.
In our view strict application of Forest Law and punishing the violators are very important to protect the forest and preserve the animals. The government must take strict vigilance over what is going on in the forest and rein in the situation. Lack of attention is bound to cause enormous damage to our forest and animal species. The government should take stringent step to save our environment and wild animals.