With an aim to protect biodiversity that’s become fragmented and is scattered across the country, Bangladesh is listing all the old, sacred and socially important trees and forests. The Forest Department has been collecting information from the locals in various parts of the country about locations and details of sites that are centuries-old and sacred to the surrounding communities. On Feb. 10 this year, the government served a public notice in this regard. As per the notice, the government requested information from people about trees that are more than 50 years old and small forest patches that have social, cultural or religious value. Media reports also indicate that Bangladesh has such old trees, especially banyan and mango trees, growing across the country. “We have already received information about some of them, but not much from the common people, unlike what we expected,” said Syeda Rizwana Hasan, advisor to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC). “Considering the low volume of information, we have now engaged all our local forest officials to collect information on such aged trees and sacred forest patches so that we can profile them and declare them either protected or special conservation areas,” she said. The initiative to protect the sacred forests, aged trees and other socially important plants was made under a provision of Bangladesh Wildlife (Conservation and Protection) Law 2012. An old banyan tree (Ficus benghalensis) in Manikganj district. Image by Muhammad Mostafigur Rahman. As these forest patches are mostly private land and…This article was originally published on Mongabay