The last of them: Mammals in Dhaka’s ever-expanding urban sprawl
Mongooses, jackals, jungle cats, monkeys, and even fishing cats still call Dhaka home but rapid urban expansion is pushing them into extinction. As concrete replaces wetlands and green spaces, the city’s last wild mammals cling to survival in pockets few residents ever see
According to a report published in The Business Standard last week, there is only one tree for every 28 people in Dhaka, when there should be three trees per person.
Although the news evoked no surprise, it sent me down a tunnel of thoughts.
What is the situation of wildlife in this city? I wondered. I tried to plumb my memories for encounters and for discussions with colleagues and photographers who have crossed paths with urban carnivores.
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Not many expect wild mammals in Dhaka — most don't even want them. With more than 20 million people squeezed into one of the world's fastest-changing megacities, the landscape has become a maze of concrete and construction, gridlocked traffic, and fading greenery. "Wildlife" here often means a myna on a balcony grill or a stray resting under a tea stall.
But beyond the neon glow of billboards and the dust of half-built expressways, there is a different Dhaka. As has happened in many other metropolises, mammals are quietly and constantly trying to adapt to rapid change.
Life finds a way; we know this from Jurassic Park. Here in Dhaka, it is trying to do just that.
We will go from the most prolific and adaptive to the most sensitive mammals one might expect to encounter — if, of course, one looks in the right places.
Forgotten mongooses
Mongooses would be the last species to leave Dhaka. They will still be here when most other carnivores have vanished. Small Indian mongooses move through the city like sleek ghosts — too quick for the eye, too light for the ear, too overlooked for most people to even notice.
Wherever a pocket of greenery survives — Ramna Park, Dhaka University campus, Dhanmondi Lake, and corners of Uttara and Purbachal yet to be baptised with concrete buildings — mongooses call it home.
In the early mornings, they are a common sight in the less modernised sections of Dhaka University. Not long ago, they were also frequent around Curzon Hall. Once the Metro Rail cut through Shishu Academy and Curzon Hall, and two gigantic buildings were erected near Chan Khar Pool, mongooses became boxed in and increasingly rare.
In the garage of my apartment building, built on what was once a horizonless wetland, a lone large male used to visit the trash bin regularly. About two months ago, the caretaker sealed all the nooks and crannies. No matter how adaptive mongooses are, Dhaka keeps pressing them.
Of cats and jackals
Where, then, can one expect to find anything larger than a mongoose? The answer lies in the lands destined for future model towns. To the east, one can go to Aftabnagar, Vatara, and Satarkul; to the north lies Purbachal; and to the south, Keraniganj.
Golden jackals are everywhere in these places. Despite often being beaten or crushed under vehicles, they still seem fairly common. But there are signs of decay. Dhaka now holds the most concentrated population of colour-mutated jackals.
Albino and leucistic morphs are frequently reported, and I have also heard of black variants. These are all tell-tale signs of high-rate inbreeding and genetic drift. Then again, who cares? We have our priorities.
Next on the list is the jungle cat. Although rarer than jackals, these sleek cats are recorded in the outer belts of Uttara, Purbachal, and Keraniganj. They favour tall grass, scrub, and the interface between agriculture and woodland.
Converted wetlands sometimes create temporary grasslands, giving jungle cats opportunities to use makeshift habitats. Their days are numbered in Dhaka, but you can still find them.
The rarest cat in Dhaka is undoubtedly the fishing cat. It is all the more surprising when we consider the fact that we still have fishing cats in Dhaka. It is even more astonishing for me personally, as it is only a 30-minute ride from my residence to Aftabnagar should I wish to photograph one.
Aftabnagar and Purbachal are the only two remaining places where fishing cats have any breathing space. We might recall viral videos of jousting males captured during night-time drives to Purbachal. My photographer friend, Almas Zaman, often sends me mugshots and blurry silhouettes of fishing cats streaking past undergrowth.
The reason fishing cats are the most challenged is their habitat preference — they are wetland specialists. Dhaka was once called the Venice of the East. Gone is that glory, along with most of its wetlands. These cats are now in peril.
Fishing cats normally roam marshes, reedbeds, and floodplain rivers. In Dhaka, they now cling to small patches of waterlogged vegetation and dying waterways, surrounded by housing projects, boundary walls, and brickfields. It has been about three years since I last heard of them in Keraniganj. Dhaka's fishing cats survive because they have no other choice — not because the city has space for them.
The porcupine that shouldn't still be here
Perhaps the most surprising mammal still surviving in Dhaka is the Malayan porcupine. Porcupines require burrows, soft soil, and patches of vegetation. There are stories of porcupines living inside Dhaka Cantonment, which I find barely reliable.
It was not until a couple of years ago that my colleague in the Bangladesh Forest Department rescued a porcupine from the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport airside green space.
Porcupines in Dhaka are relics fighting a losing battle. But their presence is a reminder of how resilient wildlife can be — and how quickly it disappears when its last refuges are destroyed.
The city of bats and monkeys
One group of mammals still relatively common — though rapidly declining — is bats. Dhaka is home to several species, including fruit bats (flying foxes) and insectivorous bats that roost in old trees, university buildings, temples, and abandoned structures.
We have large colonies of fruit bats in almost every green space. You would be surprised to find small colonies on the busy Gulshan Avenue near Agora, roosting in relatively short and young devdaru trees planted on the road divider.
Although we generally refer to Dhaka's bats as fruit bats, there are surely many more species. For example, in Curzon Hall, there are two large colonies of smaller bat species that deserve critical taxonomic evaluation. Maybe someday, someone will be mad enough to set aside other priorities and study them.
Old Dhaka's rhesus monkeys cling to temples, narrow alleys, and rooftops, moving with surprising agility through a labyrinth of wires, balconies, and crowded streets. They scavenge for food, interact cautiously with humans, and survive in spaces that shrink with every new construction.
In Dhaka Officers' Housing Society (DOHS) and other planned neighbourhoods, monkeys find refuge in landscaped gardens, roadside trees, and the occasional leftover meal from residents.
Though their lives here are more controlled, they too are at the mercy of human expansion. Seeing them navigate the city so deftly is both inspiring and heartbreaking — a reminder of the resilience of wildlife, and of how fragile their foothold is in a world built overwhelmingly for people.
Why am I writing this?
This is essentially a story of extinction. Today or tomorrow, the open spaces bought by housing projects — where our cats and jackals cling on — will be filled with concrete structures. Expressways will cut through the road dividers and whatever small trees support smaller bat colonies.
With multiple "old" sections of Dhaka University awaiting impending modernisation, mongooses will bid farewell there. These are all too irrelevant in the modern concept of development — expendable and ignorable.
Among small mammals, we recently lost Bengal foxes in Dhaka city. Then again, in the last century, Dhaka could not save its large mammals — tigers, leopards, buffaloes, or grassland birds; the list goes on. As that tertiary layer of the ecological pyramid is gone, it is now time for the secondary layer of smaller mammals to say goodbye.
What pains me most is the lack of any intervention to save Dhaka's wildlife. In other megacities, numerous research and conservation projects are ongoing. Badgers, foxes, coyotes, squirrels, dormice, hedgehogs, otters — the list of species studied in urban settings is endless.
In a recent conversation, a global figure in conservation considered science and conservation to be two separate entities, drawing a hard boundary. When proposed otherwise, I find his choleric temper and condescending manner bemusing. Absolutism and cultism have no place when it comes to saving wildlife. Someday, I will tell that story.
Till then, these extinction stories should be documented. Tell me: without hunting anecdotes and colonial gazetteers, how would we possibly know what we lost in the past century?
Most residents will never know what they are still losing. Let them have a chance to stay aware and, perhaps, to mourn someday.
