**4. Wildlife habitats in Bangladesh**

Among the 5 global ecological domains and 20 global ecological zones of the world, 33% of Bangladesh belongs to tropical rain forest GEZ and 67% to tropical moist deciduous forest GEZ of the tropical domains of global ecological domains [10]. The variation in climatic features, i.e., temperature, rainfall, soil, and hydrology, led to the development of 25 bioecological zones with distinct characteristics. Bangladesh has 1.45 million ha of forest land (9.8% of total area) of which 1.21 million ha (84% of forest) is natural forest and 0.24 million ha (16% of forest) is plantations [10].

Vegetation characteristics divided the natural forests of Bangladesh into evergreen/semievergreen, deciduous, and mangrove forest. Noncontinuous freshwater swamp is distributed in the northeast basin. Tropical evergreen and semievergreen forests constituting 44% of natural forest are extended over Chittagong, Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), Cox's Bazar, and Sylhet covering an area of 6700 km2 which is about 4.54% of total landmass of Bangladesh. Dominant native plant species include species of *Dipterocarpus* spp., *Artocarpus* spp., *Ficus* spp., *Syzygium* spp., *Mangifera* spp., *Tectona grandis*, etc. The moist deciduous Sal forest of Bangladesh is mainly consisted of Madhupur tract which is located in the central part covering an area of 340 km2 [10]. Dominant trees of this forest are *Shorea robusta*, *Lagerstroemia speciosa*, *Dillenia pentagyna*, *Adina cordifolia*, *Terminalia* spp., *Albizia* spp., etc. The Sundarbans, the largest single patch of mangrove forest, is located at the southern extremity of the Padma (Ganges) and Jamuna (Brahmaputra) delta which covers about 5770 km<sup>2</sup> area [11]. Fairly dense evergreen plant species of 10–15 m height is the main feature of this forest. These species are adapted for living under saline condition and regular inundation by the tides. Succulent leaves, stilt roots, pneumatophores, and viviparous germination are the key features of these plants. *Heritiera fomes*, *Excoecaria agallocha*, *Nypa fruticans*, *Sonneratia apetala*, *Rhizophora* spp., *Ceriops decandra*, *Phoenix paludosa*, and *Acrostichum aureum* are the common plants of the Sundarbans. Wetlands of Bangladesh also support a large number of

plants and wild animals of the country. Nearly 50% (8 million ha) of the total land surface of the country including river, natural lakes, tanks, reservoir, mangrove forests, estuarine, and seasonally inundated floodplains are considered as wetland.
