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Assessment of Present Environmental Status of the Ratargul Swamp Forest Sylhet

T Siddika
The Sylhet Khajanchibari International School and College, Sylhet, Bangladesh

MAK Azad
Department of Botany, Directorate of Secondary and Higher Secondary, MoE, Bangladesh

MH Sujan
Department of Geography and Environment, School of Physical Sciences, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet 3114, Bangladesh

MM Hasan
Department of Geography and Environment, School of Physical Sciences, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet 3114, Bangladesh

Abstract/ Executive Summary:

This study aims to find out the present environmental status and issues that have emerged in the recent time due to change in human activities, resource extraction and human dependency on the forest. This study is based on both qualitative and quantitative approach with Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools and random sampling of 260 respondents, six focus group discussions (FGDs), six key informants interviews (KIIs). The result suggests that about 90% of poor and middle-class households are depended on the income from tourism, agriculture or boat riding activities. Both the local people and tourists ’activities are responsible for decreasing environmental condition by plastic pollution, land cover and land use change, water follows control, road and building construction and violence of rules and regulation. The south and east boundaries, and the center of the forest are mainly facing land use and land cover changes between the years of 2005 to 2018. For sustainable management, local communities should be aware of the importance of swamp forest and have to find out alternative income sources to reduce pressure on swamp forest in terms of resources extraction and forest degradation.

Keywords: Degradation, Ecotourism, Environmental assessment, Swamp forest

Location: Ratargul Swamp Forest is chunk under the Sylhet Forest Division

Start Date: 00-00-2005

End Date: 00-00-2018

Program Area: Risk Management in Agriculture

Non-commodity: Weather/Climate

Objectives:

To find out the present environmental status and issues that have emerged in the recent time due to change in human activities, resource extraction and human dependency on the forest.

Methodology:

Ratargul Swamp Forest is chunk under the Sylhet Forest Division. It is located at about 45 km on the North- West of Sylhet town on the bank of Goyain. The administrative location of the site is under Upazila Goainghat and district Sylhet. The administrative beat office is situated at latitude 25°00.025′N latitude and 91°58.18′E longitude (IUCN 2004). A number of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) tools were used to collect environmental related data from the local people based on respondent’s perceptions. The PRA is a key approach where local people are able to share, enhance and analyze their information concerning to lifestyle, condition and to plan and act (Chambers 1994) using the techniques of household survey, key informant interviews (KIIs), focus group discussion (FGDs) with semi-structured questionnaires. The recognized sample size determination formula (Salganik 2006) [on the basis of 50% indicator percentage, 95% confidence interval, and 0.07 precision and highest response distribution with an assumed design effect 1.33] with cluster sampling design yields that at least 260 respondents were required for the study. For the study, 6 FGDs and 6 KIIs had been carried out from the three villages viz. Aolarkut, Ratargul and Chiringi. Remote sensing is a process that helps to detect and monitor the physical characteristics of an area by measuring its reflected and emitted radiation at a distance from the targeted area (USGS 2019). In this study, only the spatial changes of land use is measured and visualized to aid the information as possible from the images. As Ratargul Swamp forest is coverered only of area and having short of fund to carry out a high- resolution image of different years, a Google Earth Pro images of four different years (2005, 2008, 2015 and 2018) have been taken to visualize the changes of the forest by years (Hu et al. 2013, Malarvizhi et al. 2015). For analysis and graphical representation of results, IMM SPSS Statistics 25.0, Microsoft Excel, ArcGIS 10.4.1 software had been used in this study.

Source of Information: J. bio-sci. 28: 51-57, 2020

Article Link (Online Journal): DOI: https://doi.org/10.3329/jbs.v28i0.44710

Funding Source:

Budget:

Total Budget (Tk.) :

Achievement/Findings:

The results of the study demonstrate that absence of distinct forest boundary, high dependency on forest, absence of operation of standing law and implication of policy, inadequacy of administrative people, no fixed tourist rules etc. are causing the major threat to the present environment of the Ratargul Swamp forest. Though, working together with local community, forest department, national and international NGO’s, research organizations, and others volunteer organization (participatory forest management approach) could be effective techniques to overcome prevailing difficulties of Ratargul Swamp forest.

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