THE safety of hills and reserve forests is nearing the breaking point as loggers and vested interest groups are regularly destroying hilltops to create plain land for housing. News reports said private individuals; real estate developers and even Joom farmers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs) are openly defying Forest Laws to advance their activities and mint unlawful income in hundred of crores taka annually. It appears that they are felling trees and clearing reserve forests at their will. Most significantly destruction of hills is going on unabated in and around Cox’s Bazar where people are building housing complex and motels expanding the resort town as tourists’ arrivals are on rapid rise in the area in recent years. Wealthy people are also building hillside homes in other parts of CHTs such as Rangamati and Bandarbans. Since they are powerful people and closer to the government or come from within the ruling party, the law enforcers are not taking a close look at such breach of law; except where they have been asked to intervene. We have laws for conservation of forest and protect environment but their application is limited. Run for illegal fortune marred with corruption at every establishment of the government is now on the top as powerful people are enjoying a kind on impunity to exploit hill resources which have been left almost unprotected. What appears most alarming is the logging of trees in reserve forests by criminal gangsters who operate under the cover of locally influential people. They fell trees in deep forest at night, collect them at convenient points and transport them to saw mills in and around the city. These people are openly running the illegal trade and needless to say that forest officials guarding the reserves and law enforcers outside are working in nexus with the forest gangs and mutually benefitting from it. Yet another danger faced by hills and forests is that tribal people are destroying them for expanding their farming. Such activities are regularly causing erosion of land degrading the soil structure in the slope of the hills and protection of forests. We are afraid that more forests are coming under destruction in recent time in the hands of illegal loggers than the afforestation of trees to create more forest that the country needs so badly for conservation of environment and preserving ecological diversity. But without strict application of Forest Law and punishing the violators, protection to hills and conservation of forest remains highly challenging. In our view the government must take strict vigilance over what is going on in the forest and rein in the situation. Lack of attention is bound to cause enormous damage to national interest.
