By Prashant K. Nanda, IANS
New Delhi : Cyclone Sidr that left more than 3,000 people dead as it raged through Bangladesh in November has devastated the Sundarbans World Heritage Site, Unesco has said.
A report prepared by the UN body found “serious damage” after its experts visited the mangrove forest on the delta of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers spread between Bangladesh and India.
“The experts found that 40 percent of the site has been seriously damaged by Cyclone Sidr. It struck at the heart of the East Sundarbans, the biologically richest part of the Bangladeshi World Heritage property,” Unesco said.
“Foliage has been stripped from the branches of trees in over 30 percent of the property. Large trees have been felled by the wind and the crowns of many others have been severely damaged,” it added.
A complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands intersects the 140,000-hectare Sundarbans, one of the largest mangrove ecosystems in the world.
It is home to a wide range of fauna, including 260 bird species, the Bengal tiger and other threatened species such as the estuarine crocodile and the Indian python.
Unesco experts who visited the world heritage expressed their concern that this development would help poachers to do further damage to the ecosystem.
“Poaching and other intrusions could jeopardise the regeneration of the Sundarbans ecosystem, which should normally take 10 to 15 years,” the report stated.
The Nov 15 cyclone that left Orissa and West Bengal untouched – contrary to meteorological predictions – damaged field stations and many boats in Bangladesh.
Several pieces of equipment of the Bangladeshi forest department in the area have been washed out to sea by the storm, severely compromising the authority’s capacity to manage the site, which was inscribed in Unesco’s World Heritage List in 1997.
The Sundarbans are breeding grounds for fish, shrimp and crab, which migrate to areas beyond the site boundary, providing livelihood for 300,000 people in the area, the UN body explained.