Kamal Hossen is a recently retired professor at the Institute of Forestry and Environmental Science of Chattogram University. In a conversation with The Daily Star, he emphasised the importance of the conservation of mangrove forests.
The coastal people of Cox’s Bazar and Chattogram are left exposed to the wrath of natural disasters as a vast swath of mangrove forest which serves as a natural shield against cyclones was cleared up over the years to develop economic zones and shrimp farming along coastal belts.
These intelligent animals with tool-using abilities and a palate for crabs, also constitute the second-largest range in the monkey families. But these were not enough to stave off the long-tailed macaque’s extinction from Bangladesh
If you cruise through the Ujantia canal up to its estuary with the Matamuhuri river of Cox’s Bazar, you will see the last remnants of a mangrove forest, almost obliterated from the country’s south-eastern landscape.