Interactions between Habitats of Asian Elephants and Socioeconomic Factors in the Teknaf Wildlife Sanctuary (TWS), Bangladesh

Abstract

We conducted a one-year study in TWS, Bangladesh, to test socioeconomic-related impacts on the sanctuary caused by three performers marked as forest-endorsed settlers, illegal settlers, and forest-nearest villagers. The performer’s activities were marked as cattle ranching, gardening, paddy cultivation, vegetable growing, betel-leaf growing, and forest resource collection. These factors had a marked impact on the elephant’s use of fodder species, water bodies, feeding trails and resting places, as well as soil types. We revealed that 8% of the intruders were engaged in cattle ranching, 17% in gardening, 32% in paddy cultivation, 25% in vegetable growing, 6% in betel-leaf growing and 12% were forest resource collectors. These numbers were taken out of a recorded total of 26,937 incidences of forest intrusions, including forest endorse settlers (4%), illegal settlers (35%) and nearest forest villagers (61%). The disturbance rate differed statistically significantly across 6 study sites on the east coast and 4 study sites on the west coast in response to socioeconomic-related activities. Almost 2827 hectares of forestland was replaced by paddy cultivation (575 ha), vegetable growing (529 ha), betel-leaf growing (480 ha), gardening (448 ha), and illegal settlement (795 ha). Thus, a total of 11615 hectares of the sanctuary was permanently damaged, posing challenges to elephant survival.