**Abstract**

Located in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, Bangladesh is a tropical country in Southeast Asia and a transitional point for flora and fauna between the Indo-Himalayan and Indo-Chinese subregions. About 11% land area (1,429,000 hectares) of the country is covered with four major forest types: mixed-evergreen forests, deciduous forests, mangrove forests, and freshwater swamp forests. Though Bangladesh is a small and densely populated country, it is the home of 1952 species of invertebrates, 653 fish, 50 amphibians, 147 reptiles, 566 birds, and 127 mammalian species of which many of them are globally threatened. We have discussed the latest status of all the major vertebrate groups in this chapter. Thirty-one species of vertebrates have gone extinct from Bangladesh over the last century. Many of the species are facing continuous threat of extinction due to deforestation and degradation of habitat caused by various anthropogenic activities. In this chapter, we are going to discuss about the current management and conservation practices and issues related to the forests and wildlife of Bangladesh.

**Keywords:** wildlife of Bangladesh, forest biodiversity, conservation, deforestation, evergreen forest, mangrove forest, protected area

## **1. Introduction**

Bangladesh is a very small but densely populated country with very rich biological diversity. It is located at the cross roads of the Indo-Himalayan and Indo-Chinese subregions in the oriental region and is the transitional zone for the flora and fauna of the subcontinent and that of the Southeast Asia [1, 2]. The country is also a part of the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot, demanding high conservation priorities on a global aspect [3]. Because of its zoogeographical location, Bangladesh plays a significant role in terms of the migratory species, acting as the flyways or the staging ground for wildlife movements of the region [1].

Bangladesh has a total of 2,600,000 hectares of forest cover which is about 17% of the total land area of the country. About 61.52% of the forestlands (1,600,000 hectares) is owned and managed by the Bangladesh Forest Department (BFD), 26.80% of unclassified forest (697,000 hectares) is under the jurisdiction of the deputy commissioner (executive chief of district), and 10.38% of the land (270,000 hectares) is private woodland and community forests, controlled by the community [4, 5]. Despite of having a rich biodiversity, Bangladesh has one of the lowest per capita forestlands in the world [6] mostly due to the high human

population density in the urban areas. Moreover, the country has also experienced one of the highest rates of deforestation in south Asia, 2600 hectares per year [7, 8].
