Bangladesh needs to find space for wildlife, says a global expert

Bangladesh, like many other countries, needs to find space for both the wildlife and its people keeping in mind that biodiversity is important for the world, says a renowned global wildlife expert.  “Everybody has a role to play,” Dr Craig B Stanford, a professor of Biological Science and Anthropology at the University of Southern California, told UNB in an interview saying tigers, turtles and fish are important, and also very important their protection. He said there are many dedicated people and conservationists in Bangladesh though many people around the world ask the conservationists why they do worry about these animals – turtles and monkeys — when there are many people who do not have food to eat.

The US professor said he is fully aware of the issues like big population density and other problems but biodiversity is very important to the wellbeing of the planet. Highlighting the importance of having space both for wildlife and people, he said there are many species and it is hard to even know which species is the most important one. “If we lose them, before we understand, we’ve lost important things for ourselves,” he said adding that turtles are playing an important role in ecosystem.

Prof Stanford visited Chittagong Zoo and Hazrat Bayezid Bostami shrine recently and had a very “productive” discussion there on how to protect the turtles. He talked to khadem (caretaker) of Bayezid Bostami shrine conveying that he wants to help protect the turtles. “The shrine, as khadem told me, is very dependent on the turtles. If the turtles disappear, the number of visitors would go down. We hope that we can develop some cooperative plans.” Farid Ahsan, a zoology professor of Chittagong University, who studied this black soft-shell turtle, in his 1984 survey, recorded around 320 Bostami turtles in the shrine pond and the number has declined in a very significant way over the past decades.

The black soft-shelled turtle, a freshwater species, found in Chattogram and India’s Assam State and was declared ‘extinct in the wild’ in 2002 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Pof Stanford mentioned that the rarest of turtles as well as tortoises that need to be preserved are found in Asia. “Many of the tortoises and turtles which are found in captivity, are extinct in the wild,” he said.

For More: http://www.theindependentbd.com/post/192873

Posted by admin on Mar 27 2019. Filed under Biodiversity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry