Are we asking the right questions in Bangladesh wildlife conservation?
From protecting isolated forests to releasing tigers and reintroducing peafowl, Bangladesh’s wildlife interventions often focus on action before evidence. The real conservation challenge is to understand what species and ecosystems actually need before deciding how to save them
Conservation decisions often stem from a deceptively simple question: what should we protect? The answers are usually human choices — a forest declared protected, a sanctuary proposed, a tiger released, a catfish labelled a problem, a bird reintroduced — each sold as a success. The harder question goes unasked: what does wildlife actually need?
Across Bangladesh, conservation decisions often answer the easier question rather than the harder one. The issue is not too much conservation — it is acting before understanding the ecological problem.
A 'reserve forest' in a burgeoning city
Consider Purbachal. In 2025, its last half square kilometre of Sal forest was recognised as a Special Biodiversity Area — a forest island in one of the country's fastest-developing urban landscapes, home to 128 plant and 74 animal species, including threatened wildlife. Worth celebrating. But what happens next?
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Purbachal is becoming a major urban centre — roads, housing, commercial development, government offices. The forest is already isolated, and its ecological value depends not on species counts today but on its size and surroundings.
Fishing cats and foxes have been reported nearby, and experts hope they survive. But can half a square kilometre, increasingly hemmed in by concrete, sustain them long-term? Or are we building another Ramna Park — green on the surface, but no longer a functioning wildlife landscape? Protection on paper is not ecological security.
An elephant sanctuary in 'nowhere'
For years, Lathitila in Moulvibazar was a contested site for wildlife development; a proposed safari park was cancelled. More recently it has been floated for elephant conservation, after an assessment placed it within the Indo-Burma Biodiversity Hotspot and a transboundary elephant corridor.
But Lathitila is remote, with reportedly only a handful of elephants in a vast landscape. Most of Bangladesh's elephants live farther south and east, in Chattogram, Cox's Bazar and the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
So where should limited resources go first? A sanctuary or rescue facility should sit close to where elephants actually live — not hundreds of kilometres from an injured animal in the Hill Tracts. Lathitila may matter as a corridor. That does not make it the right place for everything else elephants need.
Before rewilding, who is already there?
In July, Bangladesh released a rehabilitated tigress into the Sundarbans, near Andharmanik in the Chandpai Range, after six months recovering from snare injuries — far from where she was rescued. The Forest Department set camera traps to track her. Treating and releasing a severely injured wild tiger was itself extraordinary.
But did anyone ask who already lived there? Camera traps later recorded other tigers in the area, including a male and a female with two cubs. Whether the released tigress survived, dispersed or met another fate is unknown; over a month on, she still had not been photographed.
Experts knew tigers occurred nearby — but that is not the same as knowing population size, vacant territories, or where a new tiger might fit. A baseline survey should have come first. This is not an argument against releasing rescued wildlife, but for understanding the landscape before intervening: a release involves existing animals, territories, prey and space, not just suitable forest.
A nuisance? Where is the evidence?
The goonch, or baghair, sits between two conservation narratives: the Forest Department is obliged to protect it, while fisheries authorities and fishers see this predatory catfish as a threat to other stocks. But where is the evidence — of actual damage to fisheries, or that removing goonch improves fish production? Bangladesh has a habit of villainising predators: a fish that eats fish becomes a nuisance, a carnivore that eats livestock becomes a conflict animal. Without evidence of ecological role, such decisions become institutional turf wars, not science.
Rewilding peafowl without connecting people
Bangladesh is also reintroducing the Indian peafowl, locally extinct for decades, soft-released into Madhupur National Park in 2025 to restore the species and its Sal forest habitat. Reintroduction is emotionally powerful. But what happens once the enclosure opens?
Peafowl roam widely — forest, farmland, settlements. Released birds in Madhupur will inevitably meet people, crops and homes. Have communities been informed, or their tolerance assessed? What happens when the birds raid crops or yards?
A species can quickly become a pest if it returns without social preparation or natural predators to check its numbers. The enclosure is a safe start; the real test begins once the birds leave it.
The larger question
This is the wider problem with Bangladesh's protected areas: protection is measured by boundaries, not ecological function. A carnivore does not recognise a gazette notification. A leopard needs habitat and connectivity beyond any sanctuary line. A fishing cat needs wetlands beyond the forest patch where it was photographed. Elephants need corridors; tigers need territory and prey.
Purbachal shows what happens without landscape-level thinking. Lathitila shows presence alone does not define a corridor. The Sundarbans tigress shows why population data must precede release. The goonch shows the cost of deciding without evidence. The peafowl shows that reintroduction is not restoration. Different problems, same weakness: intervention sounds more urgent than the ecological question behind it.
Bangladesh does not lack ambition — forests, sanctuaries, recovery programmes, camera traps and restoration plans all exist. What is missing is research before intervention: home-range data before sizing a protected area, connectivity studies before drawing boundaries, population surveys before releases, ecological evidence before culling predators, and an understanding of why a species vanished before assuming reintroduction will bring it back.
Are we looking for problems beyond what is immediately visible — or just solving the ones we can see?
