Natural Beauty: Sundarbans, Bangladesh

                                         Natural Beauty: Sundarbans

The Sundarbans (Bengali: সুন্দরবন, Shundôrbôn) is a characteristic locale in southern Bangladesh and extraordinary southern piece of the Indian condition of West Bengal in the limitless stream delta on the Bay of Bengal. It is the biggest single square of tidal halophytic mangrove woodland on the planet. The Sundarbans covers around 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 sq mi) the vast majority of which is in Bangladesh with the rest of India. The Sundarbans is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Sundarbans South, East and West are three secured backwoods in Bangladesh. This area is thickly secured by mangrove backwoods, and is the biggest stores for the Bengal tiger. The Sundarbans National Park is a National Park, Tiger Reserve, and a Biosphere Reserve situated in the Sundarbans delta in the Indian condition of West Bengal.

The history of the area can be traced back to 200–300 AD. A ruin of a city built by Chand Sadagar has been found in the Baghmara Forest Block. During the Mughal period, the Mughal Kings leased the forests of the Sundarbans to nearby residents. Many criminals took refuge in the Sundarbans from the advancing armies of Emperor Akbar. Many have been known to be attacked by tigers. Many of the buildings which were built by them later fell to hands of Portuguese pirates, salt smugglers and dacoits in the 17th century. Evidence of the fact can be traced from the ruins at Netidhopani and other places scattered all over Sundarbans. The legal status of the forests underwent a series of changes, including the distinction of being the first mangrove forest in the world to be brought under scientific management. The area was mapped first in Persian, by the Surveyor General as early as 1764 following soon after proprietary rights were obtained from the Mughal Emperor Alamgir II by the British East India Company in 1757. Systematic management of this forest tract started in the 1860s after the establishment of a Forest Department in the Province of Bengal, in British India. The management was entirely designed to extract whatever treasures were available, but labour and lower management mostly were staffed by locals, as the British had no expertise or adaptation experience in mangrove forests.

The first Forest Management Division to have jurisdiction over the Sundarbans was established in 1869. In 1875 a large portion of the mangrove forests was declared as reserved forests under the Forest Act, 1865 (Act VIII of 1865). The remaining portions of the forests were declared a reserve forest the following year and the forest, which was so far administered by the civil administration district, was placed under the control of the Forest Department. A Forest Division, which is the basic forest management and administration unit, was created in 1879 with the headquarters in Khulna, Bangladesh. The first management plan was written for the period 1893–98.

In 1911, it was described as a tract of waste country which had never been surveyed nor had the census been extended to it. It then stretched for about 266 kilometres (165 mi) from the mouth of the Hugli to the mouth of the Meghna river and was bordered inland by the three settled districts of the 24 Parganas, Khulna and Bakerganj. The total area (including water) was estimated at 16,900 square kilometres (6,526 sq mi). It was a water-logged jungle, in which tigers and other wild beasts abounded. Attempts at reclamation had not been very successful. The Sundarbans was everywhere intersected by river channels and creeks, some of which afforded water communication throughout the Bengal region both for steamers and for native ships.

The Sundarban woods lies in the limitless delta on the Bay of Bengal shaped by the super intersection of the Ganges, Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna streams crosswise over southern Bangladesh. The occasionally overflowed Sundarbans freshwater overwhelm woodlands lie inland from the mangrove backwoods on the beach front periphery. The backwoods covers 10,000 square kilometers (3,900 sq mi) of which around 6,000 square kilometers (2,300 sq mi) are in Bangladesh. It got to be distinctly engraved as an UNESCO world legacy site in 1997. The Indian piece of Sundarbans is evaluated to be around 4,110 square kilometers (1,590 sq mi), of which around 1,700 square kilometers (660 sq mi) is possessed by waterbodies in the types of waterway, channels and streams of width changing from a couple meters to a few kilometers. 

The Sundarbans is converged by a perplexing system of tidal conduits, mudflats and little islands of salt-tolerant mangrove woodlands. The interconnected system of conduits makes practically every side of the woodland open by pontoon. The zone is known for the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris), and in addition various fauna including types of winged creatures, spotted deer, crocodiles and snakes. The prolific soils of the delta have been liable to escalated human use for quite a long time, and the ecoregion has been for the most part changed over to concentrated agribusiness, with couple of enclaves of woods remaining. The rest of the backwoods, brought together with the Sundarbans mangroves, are critical natural surroundings for the jeopardized tiger. Furthermore, the Sundarbans serves a pivotal capacity as a defensive obstruction for the a great many tenants in and around Khulna and Mongla against the surges that outcome from the violent winds. The Sundarbans has likewise been enrolled among the finalists in the New7Wonders of Nature.

The mangrove-overwhelmed Ganges Delta – the Sundarbans – is a mind boggling biological system including one of the three biggest single tracts of mangrove backwoods of the world. Arranged for the most part in Bangladesh, a little bit of it lies in India. The Indian piece of the woods is assessed to be around 19 percent, while the Bangladeshi part is 81 percent. Toward the south the woodland meets the Bay of Bengal; toward the east it is circumscribed by the Baleswar River and toward the north there is a sharp interface with seriously developed land. The regular waste in the upstream zones, other than the fundamental waterway channels, is wherever hindered by broad banks and polders. The Sundarbans was initially measured (around 200 years back) to be of around 16,700 square kilometers (6,400 sq mi). Presently it has dwindled into around 1/3 of the first size. The aggregate land zone today is 4,143 square kilometers (1,600 sq mi), incorporating uncovered sandbars with an aggregate territory of 42 square kilometers (16 sq mi); the rest of the water zone of 1,874 square kilometers (724 sq mi) includes waterways, little streams and channels. Waterways in the Sundarbans are meeting spots of salt water and freshwater. Along these lines, it is a district of move between the freshwater of the waterways beginning from the Ganges and the saline water of the Bay of Bengal. 

The Sundarbans along the Bay of Bengal has advanced throughout the centuries through regular testimony of upstream residue joined by intertidal isolation. The physiography is ruled by deltaic arrangements that incorporate endless seepage lines related with surface and subaqueous levees, spreads and salt marshes. There are likewise negligible swamps above mean tide level, tidal sandbars and islands with their systems of tidal channels, subaqueous distal bars and proto-delta dirts and residue dregs. The Sundarbans' floor changes from 0.9 to 2.11 meters (3.0 to 6.9 ft) above ocean level. 

Biotic variables here assume a critical part in physical waterfront advancement, and for natural life an assortment of environments have created which incorporate shorelines, estuaries, perpetual and semi-changeless bogs, salt marshes, tidal streams, seaside rises, back rises and levees. The mangrove vegetation itself aids the development of new landmass and the intertidal vegetation assumes a critical part in marsh morphology. The exercises of mangrove fauna in the intertidal mudflats create micromorphological highlights that trap and hold silt to make a substratum for mangrove seeds. The morphology and development of the eolian rises is controlled by a wealth of xerophytic and halophytic plants. Creepers, grasses and sedges balance out sand hills and uncompacted silt. The Sunderbans mudflats (Banerjee, 1998) are found at the estuary and on the deltaic islands where low speed of waterway and tidal flow happens. The pads are uncovered in low tides and submerged in high tides, subsequently being changed morphologically even in one tidal cycle. The tides are large to the point that roughly 33% of the land vanishes and returns each day.[14] The inside parts of the mudflats fill in as a flawless home for mangroves.