Impact of Betel Leaf Cultivation on the Protected Forest Area of Teknaf Peninsula, Bangladesh
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Impact of Betel Leaf Cultivation on the Protected Forest Area of Teknaf Peninsula, Bangladesh Asik S. M. Ullah1,3 · Masakazu Tani1 · Jun Tsuchiya1 · Abiar M. Rahman2 · Zulfikar M. Rahman3 Accepted: 30 March 2020 © Steve Harrison, John Herbohn 2020
Abstract Deforestation is a severe threat in the context of climate change and the establishment of protected forest areas is a crucial strategy to conserve and manage forests. This study aims to investigate the impact of betel leaf cultivation on the protected forest area known as the Teknaf Wildlife Sanctuary in the southern coastal area of Bangladesh. The research objectives were to describe the extent of betel leaf cultivation in and around the protected forest area, determine its impact on the forest and describe the socioeconomic factors affecting the cultivation. Data were collected from 2015 to 2017 covering 4622 households in the Teknaf upazila (upazila is an administrative unit). Satellite images were analyzed to determine the impact of cultivation on the forest. Among the factors analyzed the determinants of betel leaf cultivation, family size, occupation and encroachment in the forest were found to have a significant impact. This study identified 4273 paan boroj (betel leaf cultivation plots) covering an area of 250.74 ha, among which 1264 were found inside the forest area occupying 59.76 ha forestland. The average size of a paan boroj was 0.06 ha and in total required 1.32 tons of wooden poles from the forest. Over dependency by local people for their livelihood on forest resources is creating pressure on the protected forest and causing severe deforestation. Sustainable resource use, for example, following a tree-based agroforestry system and adopting more sustainable approaches for betel leaf cultivation, can reduce the deforestation inside the protected forest and conserve biodiversity. Keywords Deforestation · Betel leaf cultivation · Teknaf Peninsula · Protected forest area * Asik S. M. Ullah [email protected] 1
Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
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Department of Agroforestry and Environment, BSMR Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh
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Department of Agricultural Extension Education, Bangladesh Agricultural University, Mymensingh, Bangladesh
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A. S. M. Ullah et al.
Introduction Deforestation is a severe concern for Bangladesh as the annual rate of gross deforestation was about 0.77% during 2006–2014 (Reddy et al. 2016). Despite having high biodiversity, the country has one of the lowest per capita of forestland (Mukul and Quazi 2009) and high deforestation rate in the natural forests. As a strategy to stem the deforestation, Protected Areas (PAs) was established in Bangladesh during the 1980s (Chowdhury and Koike 2010) and currently there are 34 PAs covering nearly 270,000 hectares of forestland (Mukul et al. 2017). PA systems are specially designed to restrict or reduce the anthropogenic pressures in areas of high biological diversity (Venter et al. 2014). However, the effectiveness of PAs to m
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