The Vanishing Jungle revisited: Wildlife, history, and conservation in Bangladesh

At Leakey's Bookshop, Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop, nestled at the northernmost UK city of Inverness, I came upon an original copy of The Vanishing Jungle. It was a sheer coincidence. 

As part of the Statistical Ecology program of the University of St Andrews, we were on our way to the Black Isle, a research station operated by the University of Aberdeen. One of the cohort students caught up with us from Aberdeen. We reached Inverness first, and our supervisor proposed to take a scenic route. 

Leakey's crossed our path. We entered. The old, pungent, acidified aroma of more than 100,000 books immediately hit us hard. Leakey's was a duplex structure, with small, roomy blocks, aisles of shelves, and open space sagging with books of every type, sort, and kind. The store looked like a Jedi archive. I was not looking for anything in particular. I crossed the section twice where the book was stored. Then, the spine of a book caught my attention. There was a line, "illustrated by Eric Hosking". 

The name looked familiar. I picked it casually and was thoroughly stunned. In terms of probability, statistically speaking, there was an infinitesimal chance of an encounter. And it happened anyway.

In a time when AI tracks everyday life and caters to our choices, often through clandestine means, raw serendipity becomes a luxury rarity. A field biologist can relate such an event to encountering the rarest wildlife. 

The 2024 summer event with the Guy Mountfort book was something very special, almost mythical to me. It is a holy grail for all wildlife biologists in Bangladesh.

Guy Mountfort and WWF

The Vanishing Jungle: Two Wildlife Expeditions to Pakistan contains the first authoritative account of wildlife, written by a Western conservationist.

In 1966, Guy Mountfort, a renowned ornithologist, conservationist and founding trustee of the present-day World Wildlife Fund (WWF), was invited to lead scientific expeditions in two federally conjoined but geographically and culturally separate entities, West and East Pakistan. The expedition was instrumental in highlighting wildlife status in the region, covering the subzero Himalayan foothills, dry Punjab deserts, Indus River swamps, evergreen Chattogram Hill Tracts, the coastal Sundarbans mangroves, and forests of Sylhet. The latter three are now parts of Bangladesh.

The book documented 99 mammals, 423 birds, and 45 reptiles, all encountered during the expeditions. Guy Mountfort and his legion of expeditionary scientists and photographers paved the way for the declaration of several national parks.

Organised in ten chapters, the book offers an extremely vivid journey to the past biodiversity scenarios. Chapters five, nine, and ten deal with many areas in Bangladesh that, in 2026, right after 60 years, bear no semblance of wilderness or are irreparably altered. The Vanishing Jungle, in many ways, nurtured a legacy that, ultimately, shaped conservation science and practices in Bangladesh. Mostly positively but often with nuanced reservations.

Hill tracts, Sundarbans, and Sylhet

In the first expedition, Mountfort visited the Hill Tracts, precisely from Rangamati to Pablakhali. His trails followed the surroundings of the Kaptai Dam, stretching to both sides. The author was a WWII veteran and served in the Burma theatre. In the 20-some years, the damming effects and the rapid expansion of human settlements resoundingly shook his observations. The team moved through canoes and punts to areas that are now thoroughly cleared of jungles and wildlife alike. 

The northernmost corner was a thatched forest outpost at the mouth of the Maini headwaters. Beyond that, at that time, formidable forests of Kassalong to the north and Sangu in the south stood with pride.

The second expedition moved into the Sundarbans and the two distinct ecosystems of Sylhet. Starting with the Sundarbans, the expeditionary legion took the regular path: the Chandpai range, the Mandarbaria outpost, and onward to the Katka meadow. The Sundarbans, then and now, almost seem unchanged, save for the Katka forest station, which is now almost engulfed by the ever-encroaching Bay of Bengal.

From there, the journey continued into Sylhet. The team travelled between Akbarpur, the outskirts of Sreemangal, to the Tarap Hill Reserve. Then, the expedition moved to the Hakaluki and the Hail Haor, two freshwater wetlands where travel alternated between canoe rounds and elephant-back rides. In Sylhet, Mountfort was the most concerned about the expanding tea gardens and the teak plantation program that was about to set in and give rise to an ever-lasting conflict in the landscape.

Troves of information

The account, today, stands as an extinction story. Such a journey into the past is unforgiving to anyone who cares for wildlife. Nonetheless, the book, like any other expeditionary description, serves as an important reference. 

Considering present-day Bangladesh, the book essentially describes the destruction of the Kaptai-Karnaphuli Wildlife Reserve. Initial 1954 plans of protecting 800 square miles of the reserve were scraped twice and reduced to 172 square miles—to make room for the dam, for teak plantations, and for accommodating the displaced people. 

Despite the destruction, Mountfort managed to see a sambar deer near the Pablakhali, a wild imagination today. There was a joyful note on sighting and photographing white-rumped vultures there. Today, only about a hundred exist in Bangladesh.

He noted accounts of tiger kills and confirmed pugmarks in the Rema-Kalenga, perhaps traces of some of the last individuals in the entire Sylhet-Tripura region. The notes on small forest cats appeared invaluable, as much of these species' range is now excluded from the present-day assessment. Undoubtedly, the most stunning note was the rhinoceros poaching he reported from Chattogram, much later than the established account of the last rhinoceros in the Hill Tracts.

A different perspective

In the Global South, lexicons like The Vanishing Jungle often set precedence for conservation priorities. Books of this genre act as a powerful beacon. If you map the conservation sites of importance in Bangladesh, you will see they mirror Mountfort's urgency. The Sundarbans is the pinnacle of conservation success in Bangladesh. The Hakaluki and the Hail Haor receive the same treatment. The Kaptai National Park, the meagre remains of the once mighty Karnaphuli Reserve, has been under protection since independence.

In the Global South, lexicons like The Vanishing Jungle often set precedence for conservation priorities. Books of this genre act as a powerful beacon. If you map the conservation sites of importance in Bangladesh, you will see they mirror Mountfort's urgency. The Sundarbans is the pinnacle of conservation success in Bangladesh. The Hakaluki and the Hail Haor receive the same treatment. The Kaptai National Park, the meagre remains of the once mighty Karnaphuli Reserve, has been under protection since independence.

At the same time, as such books are valued to the core, some anecdotes and viewpoints often create unwanted barriers. The Sundarbans tigers are traditionally considered man-eaters. The book echoed the same, quoting a tourism-board official, "Most of the tigers of the Sundarbans were man-eaters," as he bragged about five kills. Mountfort and his team were accompanied by two local hunters, who had fifty-five kills to their credit. 

Does the Sundarbans tiger really have a taste for human flesh? Nobody has ever examined this with a scientific approach. Is it often triggered due to unwise encroachment into tiger territory for resource extraction? I sense a worthy question to pursue. But anecdotes like this pass on from generation to generation. Local hunters adept at killing Sundarbans tigers existed till the late 1990s. Oral tales are driven by primal fear and often create misleading pictures, as eminent writer David Quammen expressed in Monsters of God.

As I work on the predators of evergreen forests, the most questionable accounts in the books are those that carry an intonation that everything is going extinct or is already extinct. The absence of evidence is never the evidence of absence. 

However, contrary examples are plentiful. Mountfort noted the presence of Asiatic golden cat, clouded leopard, and leopard with a strong remark about their impending doom. Yet, after 60 years, recent, multiple two-digit evidence is fairly common. These cats, although pressed hard, still occur to this day, backed by evidence from multiple camera-trap surveys and direct encounters. Such doomsday calling in historical books is reflected in the research papers published in the 80s and 90s. And, eventually, generations have grown up accepting the fate that these animals are already gone, and any attempt is futile. 

When a shifting baseline syndrome takes hold where scientific works are just as rare, it becomes extremely challenging to alter the conservation psychology of all stakeholders and international bodies. In terms of hill forest carnivore conservation, Bangladesh is still deemed a lost cause. These books have played some inadvertent role, no doubt.

What should naturalists do

The question arises now: should scientists and naturalists not write such books? Yes, they should. I recollect conversations with many colleagues, questioning the role of conservationists and researchers. Well, I see two distinct roles, but both are integrally connected. Conservation cannot continue without science; otherwise, anything is destined to fail. And science must be properly purposed for conservation. The Vanishing Jungle will, thus, always act as a reference point for anyone who wants to break the traditional cycle of ignorance.

See, researchers or conservationists saving wilderness is a losing battle, as naturalist George Schaller often asserts. Take, for example, the Tarap Hill Reserve, the forest Mountfort promised to save. The unbecoming of this reserve might have been untenable for him if he were alive today. His pivotal work in establishing nature reserves in Jordan could not prevent Arabian leopards from going extinct. But he tried nonetheless and negotiated with a military-run government, with officials having an extreme knack for game hunting.

So, there lies the spirit. Today, the global order is experiencing unjust animosity toward everything ancient and venerable. Thus, the fate of all wildlife in West Asia, including the last Asiatic cheetahs and Persian leopards, hangs in the balance. Books like The Vanishing Jungle translate into: "Some of us tried in trying times."