The New Nation - Internet Edition

Maswood Alam Khan

Tree plantation has become a social movement in our country. Scene of a shopper in rural Bangladesh carrying a bag full of groceries in one hand and dangling a tree sapling in the other while returning home is nowadays very common. Buying tree plants from local village markets was never as great a vogue a decade or two back as it is now. Not a single homestead can be found with a forlorn and treeless backyard.

Homes are now densely surrounded by tall and leafy trees. There are greeneries galore in Bangladesh---a heartening sign for those who are worried about greenhouse effect on the global environment. Such plantations, call it aforestation or reforestation, is what that naturally had happened during the original greening of this planet Earth, a process that had a major impact on the planet's climate, carbon cycling and, ultimately, what kinds of birds, insects, and animals evolved in our ecosystems.

But a specter of widespread famine is evolving in our act of greening homes. Birds, not humans, are going to suffer the heavy casualties out of this manmade famine causing acute food shortage for the avian species. Because most of the saplings we are now planting are to be trees where birds will not find their food. These are trees from which we would be able to pluck only money.

What one nowadays can notice everywhere are rows of the kinds of trees of mahogany, shishu, acacia, chambal, nim or teak that are used to make costly furniture. For instance, it takes a sapling of mahogany worth Taka 20 only 20 years to be matured and sold at more than Taka 20 thousand, an investment growth that far outpaces any other lucrative investment scheme in any bank or in any investment company. Therefore, as a tragic corollary of our money earning efforts we are gradually forgetting to nurse plants and trees that spread aroma, store nectars or bear fruits for birds or bees.

One such neglected and endangered species is what in Latin language known by its binominal name 'Mimusops elengi' or 'Bakul' tree in Bangla. Serene shades under bakul trees and gentle fragrance of bakul flowers have always stirred up elegiac feelings and brought tranquil images to souls of our poets and laureates in Bangladesh. Enamored with bakul's bucolic appeal Rabindranath Tagore in "The Crescent Moon", a collection of his prose-poems, crooned: "I must search in the drowsy shade of the bakul grove, where pigeons coo in their corner, and fairies' anklets tinkle in the stillness of starry nights".

Not many years back the jungles on all sides of our villages were thick with the smell of bakul flower and still today a garland of bakul flower is a prize for both rural and urban people to adore and treasure for days.

This is an evergreen tree pretty tall with shiny, smooth and oval leaves. Yellowish bakul flowers bloom in April and May and its fruits are green, astringent and with milk when unripe. These milky fruits are the most luscious for a variety of birds and insects.

Perhaps for smelling sweet fragrance of bakul flower and for watching swarms of birds perching on the branches of a bakul tree it was a plant of choice to decorate open yards of mansions and palaces in undivided Bengal. Perhaps that is why 'bakultalas' in historical places still ring in our ears with a musical tenor.

But now Bakul tree is a liability for homeowners who like to see every inch of his vacant land occupied with trees and plants that should yield wood or fruits always ready for cash sale. Fragrance of flowers or trees laden with chirping birds doesn't beguile them at all. Wild birds, hungry or fed, are not their headache.

Our birds have been facing their worst famine with introduction of wholesale inorganic cultivation in the fields and disappearance of wild trees, ferns and bushes that used to bear special fruits and pods of seeds for birds. Naturally grown trees and bushes in the vicinity of human habitats where birds could somehow skimp on in search of morsels of their food are also cleared to make rooms for cash plants like mahogany or teak.

Insects, the staple food for birds, are all vanished due to pesticide used in cultivation.

Snails and slugs that used to quench hunger for both indigenous and migratory birds have thinned out almost to the level of extinction due to wholesale netting of those mollusks for making fodder for shrimps being farmed for exports. Small fishes that used to thrive naturally in ponds and lakes have already been killed by insecticide or devoured by big fishes that are intensively cultured in industrial scales.

Mutualism, or more technically speaking 'symbiosis', is a type of interdependent relationship between species based on which all the living beings on this earth have been able to survive since the days of primordial era. We humans would have been extinct long ago if there were no bird, no fish, and no animal to live as our next door neighbors on symbiotic relationship with us.

What is good to us is good to birds, insects or animals and what is good to birds, insects and animals is also good to humans.

One may obviously raise a question: "Why then cultivation of mahogany trees that fetch us more money and cultivation of inorganic crops that yield for us more crops in less time should not be equally good to birds, insects, and animals?" It should. True ostensibly! But, false intrinsically!

Biologists, zoologists, ornithologists, and entomologists know it better that biodiversity is the linchpin for the very sustenance of life.

Mahogany trees therefore must be there along with a diverse array of trees and plantations for the symbiotic growth of the plant world. Similarly, inorganic cultivation, as has been proven of late, is lethal not only for insects and microbes in the fields but organic foods so cultivated are also carcinogenic for humans.

So are now hues and cries for organic or green cultivation and long queues in shops and malls for organic fruits or grains.

The whole world has realized that the humanity committed a blunder by siding with the lure of inorganic cultivation that has already poisoned the fields with deadly chemicals to get rid of pests and insects, thereby depriving the birds of their staples. Scientists and agriculturists are now sweating with their formulae day and night to amend their errors.

Now like the rest of the world Bangladesh should also reverse its course and style of living by embracing the green revolution of organic cultivation.

Every living being---a bird, a butterfly, a vulture, or a cat---has his/her share on our land in Bangladesh and we must not have any authority to deprive them of their due claims. We are encroaching upon their abodes in forests they had occupied for thousands of years and now we are starving them of their basic food for survival by replacing their special fruit bearing trees with only timber for our furniture and fruit tress for only human consumption.

This discriminatory attitude of ours to the Bangladeshi birds, insects, and other animals must be shunned for the sake of ecological diversity, a phenomenon that is essential also for our own survival.

Not only bakul trees are essential for birds and insects. There in Bangladesh are hundreds of wild trees like banyan trees, debdaru tree (Polyalthia longifolia), rain tree, shimul tree (Bombax ceiba) etc. that provide shelters to birds and bear pods full of bird food. We should allow trees to grow tall and strong and stay put for decades to be turned into sturdy sanctuaries for wild birds. Birds need shelters from storms and protection from predators. They need natural food sources easily reachable.

If you are a traveler you must have noticed that birds, wild or tamed, in any developed country look so full-bodied, robust, and elegant. The government even in a developing country like Malaysia takes extra care for their wildlife. Living beings in their wild sanctuaries are their sacred treasures. These countries spend millions of dollars for the safety of their wild birds, insects, and animals. Endangered species in the forests are carefully tracked by infusing radio chips into their bodies or around their collars.

But in Bangladesh images of our local birds like machhhranga (kingfisher), kaththokra (woodpecker), Brahminy kite, red-whiskered bulbul, or red munia are gradually sinking into our oblivion.

Even Doel (Magpie Robin), our national bird, is seldom found. By looking at a desperate shaluk (the common mayna) panting for her breath in search of morsels of food amidst crowds of humans we may realize how our forests have alarmingly become bereft of natural food. We don't care for our birds' welfare. Our ears have become deaf to their warbles of begging food or to their twits of protesting voice.

Before it is too late we should make Bangladesh attractive not only for migratory birds for their sojourn in winter. We also must make our soil, lakes, trees, shrubs and vegetations in the forests and also in our backyards hospitable for our own indigenous birds who feel shy to migrate to an alien land. Our birds prefer dying from starvation on the land of their ancestors to embarking upon a long-haul and uncertain flight for overseas. They are after all our compatriots, our shareholders!