Taking care of forests
“Hello! My name is Dipterocarpus “ reads a sign attached to a sapling, one of many such signs installed by the Institute of Forestry at Chittagong University (IFCU) as part of local tree familiarisation initiative under a United Nations FAO project during 1986-1990. Sure enough, crowds gathered around the trees and saplings adorned with newly installed rectangular name tags, beaming with curiosity, or at times bursting into unrelenting giggles and laughter. The project was a success opined Dr. Zabella, a visiting FAO professor that targeted non-forestry community to familiarize tree species on campus.
Unlike other city-centric universities of the country, Chittagong University (CU) campus sits on a sprawling 1600-acre landscape, dotted with low-elevation hills interspersed with a few valleys that locals used for rice cultivation. Barring about a third of the area in roads and buildings, most hills were barren and filled with sage grass and weeds lacking any aesthetic or economic value up until mid 1980's. The picture was about to change as IFCU undertook a massive plantation drive on those denuded hills and along roadways. Within a few short years, once barren and pale faced campus was smiling under a lush green veil. Residents became happy with the new look of campus; the roadside trees provided the much need shade from sultry summer heat and occasional escapades for many. People noticed deer in the evening, flocks of birds flying in and out the newly established plantations. Aside from initial cheers and kudos, these juvenile plantations provided field laboratory for IFCU faculty and its students.
Last year, I visited my alma mater IFCU and decided to take a stroll along a few plantations I treaded many times some 20 years ago. This time, however, I felt some sort of sadness inside me. The lush green appeared over bearing; most plantations still carry the same densities as they did at the time of their planting, and are yet to receive the much needed thinning required for proper growth. Many are filled with competing vegetations that perhaps can be accommodated on a few experimental ones for biodiversity studies; certainly not all plantations should have been in such a pitiful state of growth.
I had asked IFCU faculties as to why the campus plantations have not had any intervention of some sort all these years. To my surprise, I learned that many non-forestry residents fear of losing biodiversity due to management activities, a belief with very little scientific basis, if not outright outrageous. The denser the better goes the belief on campus- one student told me. I was flabbergasted and sad at the same time because an apparently dense looking plantation with a lot of undergrowth does not necessarily indicate higher level of biodiversity, scientifically speaking, than one receiving periodic thinning with dispersed openings to promote healthy undergrowth as well as wildlife habitat. One must realise that forest management is not about preservation; rather it is the art and science of calculated manipulation of forests towards a desired end.
The CU authorities can take a few concrete steps:
1. Declare Chittagong University forest as the national research forest to help attract researchers from both home and abroad.
2. Allow IFCU the custodianship of forest management decisions.
3. Build one or two forest canopy walkways to serve as wildlife observatory, study pollution effects as well as to serve as eco-tourism
4. Initiate research and development partnership with private sector.
My passion for forestry took me to Canada to pursue higher studies and later to employments with a Fortune300 company and a state forestry agency in the United States. As I occasionally venture into the woods of the US pacific North West, I can still hear the giggle and loud comment of my fellow students - “Hello! My name is Dipterocarpus”.
There is money to be made, nonetheless, from these plantations through carefully designed management techniques. Suggestions mentioned above are intended to evoke discussions among academics and researches as well as concerned citizens. I am sure there are ample qualified souls in our country to help design the necessary steps.
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