Stop timber smuggling to protect forests
If timber
smuggling continues in Bangladesh unimpeded, we are afraid in less than a decade the remaining patches of the countrys forest will be depleted
The Forest Department has suspended 12 of its employees, including three officials, for their suspected involvement in the smuggling of Sundari timber from the Khulna forest range. The action was taken based on a couple of probe committee reports by the conservator of Khulna forest range.
However, the frequency of timber smuggling has shot up at an alarming rate for well over a decade now. Particularly, rampant smuggling of timber from Khulna and Chittagong forest ranges has turned our once dense jungles in the south into vast empty barren expanses. If timber smuggling continues in Bangladesh unimpeded, we are afraid in less than a decade the remaining patches of the countrys forest will be depleted.
According to a number of news reports, our law enforcement authorities too, have long been involved in the illegal felling and smuggling of trees and forestry products to neighbouring India and Myanmar taking bribes from the smugglers. Now the need of the hour is to quickly expose the entire smuggling racquet, handing them over with exemplary punishments. Though the suspension of the 12 suspected timber smugglers is encouraging, but such firm stance in tackling timber or any other smuggling of wood should have commenced long ago. There were heavy patches of teak forests along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, but due to relentless felling of trees nothing of it is left any longer.
Additionally, apart from deterring the smuggling and outflow of local timbers, the border forces should also prevent the inflow of smuggled timbers from neighbouring India and Myanmar. As per news reports, at least two markets located inside our country respectively named as Poshuram market and Majumdar Haat have disproportionately thrived on smuggled timber from India. In the Myanmar side, the illegally cut trees are reportedly sawn into beams and logs and transported by engine boats and sent to Bangladesh by the trans-boundary Naf river.
The users of wood-based items should refrain from buying any of the goods made with smuggled timbers whether it is smuggled locally or through our borders and waters. Similarly, the wood traders and furnishers should refrain from purchasing the smuggled wood.
Finally, the point is we want our forest ranges to be brought under regular and strict scanning. If necessary, concerned authorities should increase its manpower in order to protect our limited forest ranges at all costs. In todays tech-savvy world vast areas of forest ranges are being regularly monitored with the help of CC cameras and our country should also adopt this new technology.
