Shafiq Alam Yahoo News 1 Dec 07;
Environmentalists said they believed the forest would regenerate on its own and warned that human tampering with the rare ecosystem could prove disastrous.
A quarter of Bangladesh's Sunderbans forest has been damaged by a deadly cyclone that left a trail of devastation in the vast mangrove swamp, a top forestry official said Saturday.
The world's largest mangrove forest bore the brunt of the cyclone that smashed into Bangladesh on November 15, killing more than 3,200 people and wiping out thousands of villages.
"The cyclone has left huge devastation in the Sunderbans unseen for decades. Some 1,500 square kilometres (600 square miles) of the forest was damaged," chief government forest conservation official A.K.M. Shamsuddin said.
"At least seven percent of the (Bangladeshi portion of the) forest was severely damaged... while another 17 to 18 percent was partially damaged," he told AFP, adding initial satellite images showed the extent of the destruction.
The 10,000 square kilometre forest straddles the borders of Bangladesh and India's West Bengal state and lies on the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta.
The Bangladesh portion comprises 60 percent of the total area. The Indian side was untouched by the cyclone.
A UNESCO team was visiting the delta of lush forested islands, separated by a complex network of tidal rivers and creeks, to survey the destruction, Shamsuddin said.
"We're figuring out how we will tackle the damage," he added.
"If necessary, we may have to opt for assisted natural regeneration in some areas and planting in others," he said.
Under assisted regeneration, workers clear away fallen trees and other storm debris to allow new saplings to grow.
But environmentalists said they believed the forest would regenerate on its own and warned that human tampering with the rare ecosystem could prove disastrous.
"This is not the first time that the Sunderbans has been hit by a huge cyclone," said Niaz Ahmed Siddiqui, known as a world expert on the Sunderbans.
"We have recorded history of such cyclones hitting the forest in the last 200 to 300 years," he said.
"Every time the forest has been battered, it has regenerated on its own," said Siddiqui, who headed the Bangladesh government's mangrove forest research unit for 15 years.
"Any human intervention to regenerate trees is unwarranted and would be suicidal," he said.
Some less severely hit areas could start regenerating in three to four months' time, added mangrove forest management specialist Fariduddin Ahmed.
"It's a unique eco-system. It does not need any human touch -- any human disturbances would make regeneration difficult," he added.
Although not inhabited, the jungle is a magnet for thousands of impoverished villagers who live along its boundaries and work there as fishermen or collect honey or wood.
The Sunderbans is also home to an estimated 500 Royal Bengal tigers. There are only an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 of the endangered species left worldwide, down from 100,000 in 1900.
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