Reza Khan

On March 3, as the world marked World Wildlife Day, Bangladesh was reminded of a structural question: can biodiversity survive under a revenue-oriented forest governance model?

Although globally listed as Least Concern, national mapping can be misleading.

A landscape where the natural defences that once protected the island are now dismantled.

Rescuing wild animals has become a public spectacle, fuelled by social media and viral content.

During my childhood, in the late 1950s, I spent a jovial life in a remote (in those days) village named Borobari, Ballia in Dhamrai upazila in the Dhaka district, some 60 km north-west of Dhaka city.

There is only one way of entering and getting out of Malingapara, a remote village on the upper valley of Sangu, on foot. Another way that we could use to get in or out of the village was by boat through the nearly dead Sangu river.

I was trying to negotiate a treacherous paddy field plot, separating earth bunds, on the bank of Charol Beel in Rajshahi's Rohunpur upazila. I realised the lean sun was brightening up the eastern bank of a village pond in the area.