Climate change: Deer almost disappear from Nijhum Dwip

Towards the beginning of the sixties, an initiative had been taken up to create a 'Sundarban' on Nijhum Dwip of Hatiya upazila in Noakhali and that effort continued even after the independence of Bangladesh. Gradually the saplings of the mangrove forest grew and the deer population began to multiply too. Between 1974 and 1979, the forest department released 14 deer there. A census in 1996 recorded that the number of deer on Nijhum Dwip had increased to 22,000. However, now it is doubtful if there are even 2000 deer there.

Fisherman Abdul Alim has been living on Nijhum Dwip for 30 years. Last May he was speaking to Prothom Alo at Namar Bazar on the island. He said, "Before the island was teeming with deer. There were so many, you could count the people here, but not the deer. Now you can hardly get a glimpse of any deer and people are uncountable."

Prothom Alo investigations reveal that there were blunders from the very start regarding the deer. The deer were released here in a most unscientific manner, with no consideration of the environment. Along with deer, there should be tigers, monkeys, crocodiles and other animals in a mangrove forest. If not, the food cycle and the overall ecological balance get disrupted. That is exactly what happened with the deer released in the manmade 'Sundarban' of Nijhum Dwip. The administration did not think of the rules of nature and so the inevitable occurred. Deer began to multiply at an abnormal rate and then began to decrease at an abnormal rate too.

The government had also adopted a contradictory policy, declaring Nijhum Dwip to be a national park and also arranging human settlements there. This was disastrous for the deer. Every time a government came to power, it would appease its supporters by bringing them to Nijhum Dwip and handing over land. These people took up all sort of activities on the island as they pleased, destroying the habitat for the deer.

Investigations further revealed that due to the ecological imbalance, wild dogs and jackals began to increase in number on the island and these would prey on baby deer. Thousands of deer were also killed in high tide, cyclones and tidal surges. There was also a lack of pure drinking water for the deer due to rising salinity. Then at one point of time the local people and tourists began hunting deer too.

According to the forest department publication 'Nijhum Dwip National Park Management Plan 2015-2025', afforestation began on a limited scale at Nijhum Dwip from 1972. Then from the 1975-76 fiscal, the forest department took up afforestation there in full swing.

According to the forest department's records and wildlife experts, four types of trees were planted towards the beginning of the afforestation -- kewra, gewa, bain and kankra. Leaves of the kewra tree and grass are the main food for deer. When the deer were released on the island, the kewra tree leaves were within reach of the deer and with thousands of kewra trees all around, the deer had abundant food. And there were no animals that would hunt for deer on the island either. The deer population increased exponentially. In a matter of two decades, the number of deer there stood at 22,000, according to a deer census in 1996.

A female spotted deer reaches breeding maturity at around 14 to 17 months of age. Its gestation period is 210-217 days. Deer generally give birth in spring. A deer normally gives birth to one or sometimes two fawns at a time. The fawn nurses on mother's milk for up till six months. If the fawn dies within these six months, then the mother deer is ready to breed again. Deer in forests live from 9 to 11 years. Female deer can give birth almost every year. These facts were collected from a publication of Nepal's Hariyo Ban Programme.

On one hand the deer population began to explode and on the other, the trees began to grow taller. The leaves gradually rose above the reach of the deer. And the increased number of deer meant an increased demand for food too. Local people told Prothom Alo, the deer began to enter the human settlements and eat the vegetables in the homestead gardens. They would even help themselves to cooked rice from the pots. The deer would enter the paddy fields and eat the crop. Thousands of deer would roam around, inside and outside of the forest, along the coast, in search of food. The deer population increased so much that the Wildlife Advisory Committee even took the decision in favour of hunting deer. In the 21st board meeting held in 2006, they gave permission for hunting deer to reduce the population of this animal by two thirds. They reasoned that the size of Nijhum Dwip was not large enough for so many deer.

According to wildlife experts, the forest department records, various research papers on Nijhum Dwip and the local people, the number of deer began to fall from after 2000. In a study of 2006, the number of deer on the island was stated to be 14,400. Even this was excessively high. According to wildlife experts, the ideal number for spotted deer in any forest should be 40 to 60 per sq km.

In December 2009 a team from the Wildlife Advisory Committee visited Nijhum Dwip to see the state of the deer there for themselves. Yet they only saw one deer in the two days that they wandered around the Nijhum Dwip forest area. They then moved away from the decision to allow deer hunting.

In the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) 2015 publication, 'Red List of Bangladesh Volume 2: Mammals', it was said that in 2006 there had been over 14,000 deer in Nijhum Dwip. But due to shrinking habitat, food scarcity and fawns being attacked by jackals and wild dogs, in 2015 this number dropped to below 2000.

Only a single deer was seen during a visit to Nijhum Dwip in May last year too. Deer are also hardly seen during the regular forest department patrol. They only saw eight deer in three months (8 April to 10 May), they told Prothom Alo.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, the Noakhali coastal forest department divisional forest officer Abu Yousuf said, "There was a 40,390-acre reserved forest area on Nijhum Dwip. Now there is a union parishad here, people have increased. People and wild animals cannot live together! That is why the number of deer has gradually dropped."

Pirates and a certain group among the locals began to smuggle out deer and sell deer meat. A small or medium sized deer would sell for Tk 20 thousand to Tk 30 thousand and many locals got involved in poaching deer.

The forest department on 29 November 2018 filed a case regarding deer trafficking. It was said, at 10:30 in the morning of that day, members of the Coast Guard's Tamiruddin camp nabbed seven people carrying live spotted deer by a local vessel. The forest department later took the deer and the detained persons into their custody.

In another case lodged on 30 October 2022, it was said that a group of six persons had hunted a spotted deer in the New Char Jonak reserved forest of Noakhali's Nalchira range Dhalchar Beat. The deer had been strung up on a tree and two were skinning it, with two others helping them. The other two were putting away their deer trap. Later they were caught there with the help of the Coast Guard.

Forest department officials say that before the wildlife conservation act was amended in 2012, people would secretly and openly hunt deer. They would catch deer, cook and eat the venison.

During the rehabilitation in 1988, Abdul Malek (62) set up his hearth and home in Namar Bazar of Nijhum Dwip. Speaking to Prothom Alo last May, he said, "There was a time when deer would be caught, slaughtered and eaten every day. There is not a single person on this island who hasn't had venison."

In March 2015, Nijhum Dwip chairman Mehraj Uddin was caught hunting for deer at the island's Chhoakhali area, along with a number of military and civil officers who had come from Dhaka. Two guns were seized at the time.

Jackals and wild dogs also began attacking and eating deer, said Noakhali forest department Jahajmara range's Char Osman Beat officer Mohammad Sohag Ahmed. He told Prothom Alo, "There were no jackals before on the island. The jackals were brought in by the tide from other areas. Then the jackals began catching and eating the baby deer. When the deer would come with their families to the ponds to drink water, the jackals would attack the fawns. Now there are a huge number of jackals on the island."
Climate change impact

According to the forest department and the local people, large numbers of deer were also killed by devastating cyclones like Aila. Thousands of deer are washed away with the advent of every cyclone.

According to a study led by Professor of zoology at Jahangirnagar University, Mustafa Firoz, some deer are afflicted with foot-and-mouth disease during the monsoons. It is difficult for them to walk then. Such deer die of dog bites. During the research, the bones and heads of 268 dead deer were examined and it was seen that as mostly female deer were killed, reproduction had fallen. Lack of drinking water was another impact of climate change.

[Mahbubur Rahman, Noakhali, assisted in preparing this report.]

*This report appeared in the print and online edition of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten for the English edition by Ayesha Kabir