This study was based on interviews with 388 randomly selected households living near four protected areas in northern and south-eastern Bangladesh: Chunati Wildlife Sanctuary, Teknaf Game Reserve and two forest reserves. The respondents were generally poor and their perception of conservation varied across the study areas. Respondents were generally reluctant to embrace conservation and their attitude towards the conservation of protected areas depended on a set of demographic and socio-economic factors. People in northern Bangladesh had somewhat more positive attitudes towards conservation than those in the south-east. The two most important variables explaining respondents' attitudes towards conservation were the distance they lived from protected areas and their monthly income. People who are poor and who live closer to the protected areas disliked the conservation measures most. This paper contains supplementary material that can be found online at

We explored the degree to which Bangladeshi farmers perceive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) as agricultural pests, as related to the type of farming and other demographic profile of the farmers. We analysed the size and cropping patterns of farms raided by wild elephants, the extent and nature of crop loss, the months and crop-raiding time; and the size of elephants' herds that caused crop-raiding incidents. The average loss of entire crops increased with distance from the park up to 300 m and then decreased with greater the distance. The greatest loss due to crop raiding was associated with specific crops. Farmers incurred the greatest mean losses in terms of cost from like rice, vegetables, banana, and teak. The highest proportion of small losses occurred during the early evening, while the greatest financial losses occurred during late evening. Wild elephants raided crops throughout most of the year, but the greatest loss and cost were incurred during the monsoon season. The proportion of crops lost varied with the herd size of elephant responsible for crop-raiding and the duration of crop-raiding. Differences were found in the views of farmers regarding the perceptions towards elephant as pest. Considering crop-raiding elephant herd as pest has been given different views by the farmers based on their financial/comfortable status.

Overdependence on and exploitation of forest resources have significantly transformed the natural reserve forest of Sundarban, which shares the largest mangrove territory in the world, into a great degradation status. By observing these, a most pressing concern is how much degradation occurred in the past, and what will be the scenarios in the future if they continue? To confirm the degradation status in the past decades and reveal the future trend, we took Sundarban Reserve Forest (SRF) as an example, and used satellite Earth observation historical Landsat imagery between 1989 and 2019 as existing data and primary data. Moreover, a geographic information system model was considered to estimate land cover (LC) change and spatial health quality of the SRF from 1989 to 2029 based on the large and small tree categories. The maximum likelihood classifier (MLC) technique was employed to classify the historical images with five different LC types, which were further considered for future projection (2029) including trends based on 2019 simulation results from 1989 and 2019 LC maps using the Markov-cellular automata model. The overall accuracy achieved was 82.30%~90.49% with a kappa value of 0.75~0.87. The historical result showed forest degradation in the past (1989–2019) of 4773.02 ha yr−1, considered as great forest degradation (GFD) and showed a declining status when moving with the projection (2019–2029) of 1508.53 ha yr−1 and overall there was a decline of 3956.90 ha yr−1 in the 1989–2029 time period. Moreover, the study also observed that dense forest was gradually degraded (good to bad) but, conversely, light forest was enhanced, which will continue in the future even to 2029 if no effective management is carried out. Therefore, by observing the GFD, through spatial forest health quality and forest degradation mapping and assessment, the study suggests a few policies that require the immediate attention of forest policy-makers to implement them immediately and ensure sustainable development in the SRF.

Here we report the context encounters of elephant attacks on humans in Bangladesh, during the period 1989 to 2012. Attack rates significantly increased over this study period. The proportion of encounters that caused deaths or injuries differed statistically significant between the two sexes (men more deaths), age groups (elder more deaths), time of the day (more deaths during night), place of casualty (more deaths outside forests), weapon used by elephants (more deaths when elephants were using both trunk and leg) and study sites. No difference was found between seasons, elephant group size, or financial status, occupation and household size of victims. Elephant family groups were mostly responsible for attacks in the north, while single bulls were more responsible in the southeast. The place of casualty (inside or outside forests), time of the day, gender and regions were all significant in explaining the variation in encounters which resulted in human deaths or injuries. Conflict mitigation approaches including incentive-, awareness-or training programs from the forest department could help to reduce the conflict between humans and elephants in Bangladesh.

In this study, we explored the interaction between humans and Asian elephants (Elephas maximus). We analysed local mitigation techniques and propose possible measures to reduce human-elephant conflicts. For four protected areas in Bangladesh, we investigated how people interact with elephants and other crop-damaging species. Crop-damaging species differed from site to site, but elephants were generally the most frequent offenders. Although some people were able to control crop damage caused by other wildlife, damage caused by wild elephants was mostly uncontrollable. Forest villagers were somewhat tolerant of damage caused by other wildlife but they were not tolerant of damage caused by wild elephants. Tolerance of crop damage caused by wildlife other than wild elephants tended to increase with distance of respondents from protected areas. Non-tolerance of crop damage caused by wildlife was more common in southeast Bangladesh than in the north. Habitat destruction, caused by high population growth and poverty, appeared to be a major cause for increasing human-elephant conflict. There is an urgent need for adoption of an umbrella strategy (e.g. estimate the size of elephant populations, develop landscape-scale conservation plans and create forest buffer zones under community-based natural resource management schemes) in the use of conflict mitigation as a conservation tool for Asian elephants.