Bangladesh Elephants - Losing Habitat to Myanmar’s Rohingya exiles
Bangladesh Elephants - Losing Habitat to Myanmar’s Rohingya exiles. Myanmar ran the Rohingya people off of their land - their homeland for many centuries. The nearest safe place for the Rohingya to escape are historic elephant corridors in nearby Bangladesh. As a result, the Rohingya are unwittingly blocking the last elephant corridor in Bangladesh, known as Cox's Bazar.
"According to a 2019 estimate by IUCN, there are about 268 elephants in Bangladesh, and 35-45 of them live around the Rohingya refugee camps. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Bangladesh officials told me that approximately 40-42 elephants are confined in the forests of Ukhiya and Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar." [1]
Human/elephant conflicts in Cox's Bazar became a huge problem until NGOs recently established nightwatch systems and teams to push out crop and refuge-camp raiding elephants. However, being denied their native lands, the elephants have nowhere to go for forage and are now starving! [SavingGanesh.org (SG)]
Deforestation became a huge problem, as the Rohingya cutdown huge swaths of forest to fuel their cooking stoves. Again, NGOs have played a huge role to mitigate this problem and are now supplying mass quantities of propane canisters to the refugees. The forests are now regenerating. -SG
"With reforestation and other significant conservation plans — like radio collaring to understand elephant behavior in the wild and their response to the new situation — underway, a ray of hope flickers on the horizon, although more breakthroughs in settling the environmental tension are yet to emerge." [2]
Since forever, the Bangladeshi people understood the importance of these corridors and, for their own safety and for the livelihood of the elephants, have left them clear of human development. It is so very unfortunate that foreign people, with no knowledge of landscape and history are now occupying these lands. The Myanmar government is criminal in purging the Rohingyas and destroying the peaceful existence of both humans and elephants. -SG
In the coming decades, climate change will cause many similar conflicts - political, economic and drought refugees will be moving about the world for the sake of their own survival. Crisis and ad-hoc management of humans and our planet will be the modus operandi. Wildlife will continue to lose in this equation unless we understand the links in the chain of our own existence. If elephants survive, then we can rest assured that many thousands of species remain safe under the umbrella of the landscapes that they protect and nourish. -Philip Price, Director of SG
Each crisis, like this one, needs to be evaluated from a global perspective. We have been living on a slippery slope to our own demise. This must stop...one watershed, bio-region, habitat, riparian corridor etc. at a time. Everything matters! -SG
The Rohingya people cherish and worship the elephants as much and more than others. They wish no harm, but themselves are pushed to the brink of extinction and themselves have fought back with knives and swords....and now have taken flight. They are no match for the genocidal actions of Myanmar's government. Thus, they, the elephants and the scarce landscape of Cox's Bazar lose. -SG
footnotes [1] [2] Shah Tazrian Ashrafi, from The Diplomat, June 19, 2020.
