Tree Diversity and Management of Village Common Forests in Bandarban

Abstract

Village Common Forests (VCF) are used sustainably for water source conservation, livelihoods and other biomass needs ofethnic communities in the hilly areas of Bangladesh. The current forest degradation rate warrants the importance and potentiality of VCF for sustainable natural resources management. This study was conducted in two VCF of Lama and RumaUpazila at Chimbuk hill range in Bandarban district to explore the indigenous management techniques and tree species diversity. To identify tree species diversity, eighteen plots (9 plots from each VCF) were selected at different hill position (top, middle and bottom) by stratified random sampling method with the dimension of 20m×20m per plot. Shiner-winner and Simpson index were used to calculate the tree species diversity. According to the analyses, it was found that diversity was higher in top of the hill, but species density (stem/ha) was higher in the valley. It was also found that 23000 seedlings/ha regenerated naturally and among the 31 identified families, Moraceae was dominant where the density was 354 stems/ha with basal area 52.63 m2/ha. The dominant species were Schleicher oleosaand Anisopterascaphula and important non-timber species were Melocannabaccifera and Calamusgurubagrowing abundantly in the study areas. It was observed that the VCF were managed by ethnic Mro community with two different committees (customary and executive) who made some rules for natural forest conservation. This management practice is not only conserving hill forests, but also helping to improve degraded forest and create new habitats for biodiversity in the study area.

Community Dependency and Conservation Practices in Khagrachari, Bangladesh: A Study on Management of Village Common Forests (VCFs)

“…However, some NGOs have initiated programs to develop the VCF territory and at the same time enhance the livelihood facilities of the community people in order to reduce their dependence on forests as there is no government initiative to protect these forests. Other studies [6,14,36,37] have reported similar findings. In addition, regular meetings with proper goals and management aspects including different initiatives help the communities to manage VCF in a sustainable way.…”

“…The Chittagong hill tracts (CHTs) of Bangladesh covers about 13,294 km 2 combining three hilly districts covering more than 75% is considered suitable for forest resources [6,7]. In CHTs, Village Common Forest (VCF) is a natural forest other than the government forest around the households of the ethnic communities and managed for water source conservation, livelihoods and other biomass needs in the hilly areas of Bangladesh [1,6]. However, the long term sustainability of the VCFs will depend upon how well the local community peoples feel VCF's usefulness in their everyday lives.…”

“…Community-based practices including indigenous knowledge, behavior, and perception of conservation of resources are highly related to livelihood of local people and several studies confirm this for coastal areas [17,18,19,20] and for hilly tracts in Bangladesh [9,21]. However, while several studies have been conducted on community-based adaptation from the perspective of CHTs and in other parts of Bangladesh [5,6,8,10,13,22] and on species diversity of VCFs and other forests in Bangladesh [23,24,25] few studies on community dependency on VCF are available. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the dependency of the community and participation in and attitudes about conservation practices of Haduk Para and Hridoy Member Para VCF of Khagrachari.…”

Patterns of Resource Use for Tourism Development in Mountainous Communities in Ukraine

“…Rangamati district is the Southeastern part of Bangladesh under the Chittagong division, and the topography has a hilly slope and a moderate slope to the valley (Kamrul, Jashimuddin and Hossain, 2017). However, most of the local population, who are Indigenous communities, in the Rangamati district of Bangladesh is also suffering from water scarcity for six years (Miah et al, 2012).…”

Management Strategies for Sustainable Forest Biodiversity Conservation in Protected Areas of Bangladesh: A Study of Bhawal National Park, Gazipur

“…An estimated 5,700 species of angiosperms (Mukul, 2007;Rahman and Vacik, 2015), of which about 221 species of plants, have been recorded in BNP (Kabir and Ahmed, 2005). According to BFD, the country has 2.5 million ha of forestland (hill forest, Sal forest and tidal mangrove forest), equivalent to 17.4% of country's total area, out of which 1.6 million ha area is managed by the BFD (BFD, 2016;Islam, Jashimuddin and Hossain, 2017;Rahman and Miah, 2017). Although there are inconsistencies about the total area of forest land, but the National Forest Assessment 2007 reported about 1.44 million ha which is about 9.8% of the total land (MoEF and FAO, 2007).…”