Life Back at the Computer

The journey home to the United States went smoothly via Dubai. Though it takes over 30 hours on the return, a rest stop at a nice hotel in the Dubai airport, including a spa with jacuzzi and sauna definitely makes this trip more enjoyable!

The team in Bangladesh has now submitted all of the completed data sheets and notes for the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats study in the Sundarbans Reserve Forest, and I am already hard at work preparing the report. The revised Teknaf Peninsula Strategy will also be produced for our team by the end of April.

There is alot to do to create a more sustainable set of circumstances for the management of ecotourism in Bangladesh. Detailed action steps will be provided as an addendum to the revised Teknaf Strategy, as part of my report. With this information, the local team should have the appropriate tools to begin the real work!

For now, I will discontinue the blog as I write up all the results and provide the action plan. This blog will come alive again when action begins. Stay tuned!

Traditional Boats of Bangladesh

Our team visited master boat maker, Yves Marr, today. Yves' story is unique. He flew over Bangladesh in an airplane when working for Air France, and decided this watery delta would be the destination for his latest adventure - in a life dedicated to exploring the world by boat. He arrived in 1994 in a boat he had built himself in France. Just when he was in striking territory, a cyclone was slamming the eastern region of the country near Chittagong. So he piloted his boat into the safety of the Sunderbans mangrove system, on the west side of the Bay of Bengal. There he saw for the first time the most remarkable diversity of traditional boats on earth. Yves was dumbstruck but quickly came to learn that traditional boat makers were disappearing and that this unique world heritage was slipping away. Few would have understood the importance of this cultural resource. But Yves did, and as a result he never left Bangladesh. He fell in love with and married a Bengali woman and has since devoted much of his time to preserving traditional boats and the craftsmen who still design them by eye to perfection.

We visited his boat yard today and traveled in the smaller boat he crafted for day trips. Yves successfully launched a beautiful museum exhibition on the traditional boats of Bangladesh in 2005, which was displayed in Dhaka and is now touring Europe. To his immense surprise, Orson Welles did a documentary on sail boats around the world, and a big portion of the documentary was shot in Bangladesh. The film is now part of the exhibition.

His current plan is to create a museum of traditional boats, with a working boatyard on the property with boats under construction by traditional boat makers at all times. We toured the boats that are presently in his inventory including this remarkable shampan - a large ocean cruising boat that he and his team built from scratch based on the memories of boat makers, as the craft has disappeared from use. The name Shampan is derived from the Chinese boat name, sampan. Before European arrival, Dhaka and the delta were influenced by both Arabian and Chinese boatmaking styles. On our visit to the Sundarbans we encountered smaller river going shampans, but the ocean going craft has disappeared.

The opportunity to discuss boat making with such a master made for a great afternoon. He explained his new approach - reproducing traditional styles with fiberglass. He is no longer able to maintain the full size historical craft, as it takes immense amounts of costly labor. Instead, he will create molds of the traditional styles and preserve the heritage in fiberglass. Naval architects are also creating a digital archive of the traditional designs, as the boat builders simply bend the boards to their needs by eye and practice without any written record.

Our hope is to work with Yves on creating a new ocean going replica for cruising along the Teknaf Peninsula.

Today is my last day in country, and our core team traveled to Yves' boat yard for this last mini-field trip. In this picture, Nasim, Zahangir, myself, and Sumaiya gathered for a group shot. We have created a strong camradrie after many days traveling in remote parts of Bangladesh together. We met many people throughout our journeys, like Yves, who strongly support our mission to conserve natural areas and benefit local people through ecotourism.

Sundarbans Wildlife

The SWOT team has now completed our survey work of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for tourism in the Sundarbans Reserve of Bangladesh. Two days were spent on local boats, called Joly Boats in areas near the port of Mongla, where local people primarily visit. The small Forest Post of Krimangal is the home of a breeding center of the endangered saltwater crocodile. We observed the feeding of the captive breeders, Romeo and Juliet - so named by their croc manager. Romeo is pictured here. The post suffers from serious over visitation and problems with management of tourism, which we documented.

We moved on to observe the Katka area via a Sunderbans Guide Tours boat, hosted by its owner Hasan Mansur. We were very grateful to him for accompanying our team as we observed the management issues related to this popular point, where many overnight ships visit. Here we were able to observe the Spotted Dear in some abundance. According to an IUCN study there are over 6000 deer in this area, making tasty prey for the resident Bengal Tiger. According to the same study, this is the area of highest density for the tiger populations in the reserve, but they thankfully concentrate on eating the deer, and there are no incidents of man eating in this area.

Men were cutting thatch in this area for roofing for their houses with permits from the Forest Department.














Yesterday, we traveled to Burigoalini by car to visit Kolagachia Forest Post, which has a lovely trail on raised mud paths in the flooded forest, teaming with wildlife even in the hot, mid-day sun. This owl was observed in close quarters, much to our surprise.



The honey collectors were gathering in this area, for their annual,highly dangerous journey into the forests in this Western region of the reserve. On April 1, they race into the forest by boat on inauguration day of the harvest season. Honey collector teams were practicing their racing skills as we passed heading into the reserve. Last year nearly 1500 individuals entered for honey collection, on 191 boats. Over 30 were killed by tigers. This dangerous profession continues to attract the collectors, as the Sundarbans honey is considered to be some of the best in the world. Our team interviewed a Sundarbans honey vendor who was financing the honey collectors and profiting with approximately $8000 in sales from the collection after expenses.

Our data, now completed, will be written up in April and provided to the Forest Department, Department of Environment, and Fisheries and other opinion leaders who are seeking to improve livelihoods for the Sundarbans "stakeholders" who use the forest for a wide variety of livelihoods. As opposed to my notes earlier,there are no communities living within the boundaries of the reserve. All are outside, but it is estimated that nearly 1 million intrepid souls enter the reserve for wood, honey, thatch and other resources supporting as many as 3 million people all dependent on the Sundarbans for their livelihoods. Tourism will be a very small part of the solution and planning program - as the need for investment in tourism planning and management must precede further tourism development throughout this region.

But our data process enabled a team of 9 Bengalis to come to a much greater understanding of how tourism planning and research takes place. This is a genuine investment in the future of tourism planning in Bangladesh, and our team did an outstanding job!

Sunderbans Local Community

A team of 10 ecotourism researchers has arrived in the Sunderbans to do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis of tourism in the Sunderbans. A group with varying skills and levels has been quickly trained into an outstanding team. Each day data is collected in field locations with different objectives via a survey instrument I devised using World Tourism Organization indicators.

We visited Chadpai yesterday, where we saw hundreds of men and women collecting shrimp larvae for middlemen who purchase the fry for shrimp farmers. The collection is an illegal activity in the Sunderbans Reserve.

All the community members in this region are dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, either shrimp fry collection or illegal wood harvest. The team interviewed community members who derive some extra income from tourism: a banana retailer, van driver, pharmacist, and others. The team agrees based on our data that ecotourism is an activity that increases local income and provides a real option for these people who rely totally on illegal resource harvest for their livelihoods. Some had not eaten recently. There has been no training as yet and no effort to bring more formal tourism approaches to this area.

While tourism cannot be the only answer for these disenfranchised people, our team agreed the potential to assist with more tourism income generation was high.

Wedding

The bride and groom were in full bloom at the wedding reception of Bristy and Shohag, whom I met on the Teknaf Peninsula. They own the Mermaid Cafe and Ecolodge already a legend and a unique example for this country. I found them via Lonely Planet, and since have stayed at their lodge. We shared many animated conversations since about the importance of ecotourism for Bangladesh. They immediately joined our effort to develop the Teknaf sustainably and introduced me to a wide range of intriguing friends.

This warm family embraced my team into their celebration, and the evening was full of opporutnities to enjoy this meaningful moment with members of their family. We joined hundreds at the ceremony in Dhaka.



After the bride and groom arrived, they invited friends and family members to join them for photographs, so I was able to sit with Bristy, while friends Bob and Emily took some photos for this blog.

Ecotourism Team Maps Trek in Bangladesh

An American Bengali team were the first to map a trek across the remote Teknaf Peninsula. Following local paths, the team was easily able to develop a new ecotourism adventure that will bring excitement to the plan to develop community-based nature tourism to the Teknaf Peninsula

Departing at 7AM, the team viewed wild Asian elephant on the hillside above the trek's starting point. They were distant, but their dusty backs and trunks were clearly evident. These elephant are a remnant population, and highly endangered. Elephants are the most important megafauna remaining on the Teknaf, living in the wild in the central foothills. The elephant is of high conservation importance, as they are considered to be endangered both within their total range in Asia, and in Bangladesh.

Tigers which once roamed wild on the Teknaf, are now without habitat. Experts say it is possible they could repopulate the area, via existing wildlife corridors, if the region were re-forested with native flora and wildlife species.


This beautiful forest was in the eastern Naf Watershed near the entrance to the reserve.


The trek included walks through canyon like areas as the team followed several river beds, making the trek only feasible in the dry season. Higher ground routes will be possible, for trekkers interested in more rigorous adventures.



On arrival at the beach we spent time with the local fishing communities to learn more about their livelihood. We were very surprised to learn that already 25% of the land had been purchased by local speculators interested in developing beach hotels, and we even met some business men looking at land. The area is relatively accessible from the village of Teknaf, and so we learned that a land grab is already underway on the beach side of the peninsula.




The opportunity to cross over a watershed, view elephants, and interact with the unique cultures on the Teknaf's enormous beach is world-class. The 140 plus classes of boats in Bangladesh have already been nominated for UNESCO world heritage status. The team is now working closely with Contic - the French Bengali company that has undertaken a full study of the traditions of boatmaking, with a boatyard in Dhaka where they continue to foster traditional boat crafting. We were able to look at the different style of Bengali boats on the beach this visit with repesentatives from Contic who are helping our team to evaluate tourism potential of the Teknaf.

The trek across the Teknaf was a resounding success. Community members who led the trek had only crossed the peninsula once or twice in their lives. Our team of natural resource, ecotourism, and community specialists will now incorporate the trek into the Teknaf Peninsula Community Based Ecotourism Strategy.

Given this area is highly endangered by rapid land speculation and an impending coastal road, the team is encouraging the development of an Ecotourism Management Plan with government involvement as soon as possible. Further meetings on this topic with high governmental officials are transpiring today.

Fardeen Eco Cottage

I am sitting across from Teknaf Game Reserve at the dining table of the Fardeen Eco Cottage with Salahuddin and his brother Ziauddin as the sun sets with family and friends who are helping to expand their Eco-cottage. We plan to take a trek tomorrow across the peninsula led by Salahuddin, who has lived here all his life and presently runs the cottage and has trained as an eco-guide.

A team will be mapping the trek with GPS, as it is the first time it has been scouted for visitors to walk. There are wild elephant in the mountains and nearby. Elephants yesterday came very near Salahuddin's house and destroyed his banana tree. Some folks saw the elephants up in the mountains as well, near where we are hiking. We will be hiking with Forest Guards who do carry rifles just in case! But the idea is to try out the trail which crosses the peninsula and finishes up at the beach.

The distance is very easy, just 3 kilometers. But since the trail is not fully scouted we are giving all morning to the trek and leaving at 6AM. Other members of our team will be driving around to the very tip of the peninsula and coming to pick us up at Noon. We will all go up to see some coastal sites, including a waterfall, and visit some communities and then return to the eco-cottage tomorrow night.

It is an exciting day as Wasama has arrived as well from Contic, a wonderful boat building and tourism company. He is out now scouting boat launching sites, and we are all talking about combining the beautiful traditional boats his company builds for journeys on the Naf River with beach and forest trekking and wildlife watching. The Naf forms the border with Burma and flows south into the Bay of Bengal just east of where we are sitting.

Our team mapped all of the areas with tourism potential on our last visit, and we printed out very large GIS maps for this visit to review all the potential boating and hiking areas with local community members, private sector and government. We are already well underway with the vetting process having met with the private sector and government as well as local community and getting their endorsement to proceed.

The overall plan is to undertake an ecotourism management plan that would be bioregional and we are having meetings both at the local and national level about this. But for the next 2 days we are in the field scoping boating and trekking options. The whole community is very excited and so are we!