LGED's road through Maheshkhali forest puts conservation at risk
A Tk22-crore road project through the Maheshkhali reserved forest — one of Bangladesh’s remaining island hill forests, is raising fears of encroachment, habitat destruction and illegal logging
On one side of the winding path in Shaplapur, concrete has already been poured, culverts already cast, the raw grey slabs cutting a clean line through the undergrowth. A little further on, the road simply gives up and becomes a footpath again — the same rutted trail that generations here have walked between the hills.
That unfinished seam, where paved road meets old dirt track, is where a much larger fight is being decided: between a government agency that wants to build, a forest department that says the law forbids it, and thousands of people who just want to get to a hospital before the rain makes it impossible.
The road in question runs 4.88 kilometres from JM Ghat in Shaplapur Union to Kalarmarchhara, threading over hills through the dense cover of the Maheshkhali reserved forest — one of Bangladesh's remaining island hill forests. For decades it has been little more than a footpath, worn smooth by farmers, students and the sick making their way to market or to care.
Now the Local Government Engineering Department (LGED) wants to turn it into a paved road, backed by roughly Tk22 crore in financing from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Work began in September 2025. The Forest Department wants it stopped, and has said so, in writing, more than once.
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The dispute has now escalated to the ministry level. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change has ordered the immediate suspension of construction, instructing the Secretary of the Local Government Division to halt work on the road.
The Forest Department has welcomed the directive and adopted a firmer stance on protecting the hills and forest. Local residents, however, have taken the opposite position, demanding that the long-standing route be paved to ease the difficulties they face during the monsoon. They have even warned of protest rallies and a human chain if the project is not allowed to proceed.
At the centre of the standoff are two government notifications issued nearly 70 years ago. Gazette Notification No. 2529 of 1954 transferred the 18,286.4 acres of land in Mouza No. 12 of Maheshkhali to the Forest Department for 100 years. Three years later, Gazette Notification No. 1222 declared the land a reserved forest.
The designation placed strict restrictions on activities within the forest, including construction, tree felling, grazing and hunting. It is precisely the kind of legal protection at the heart of the current dispute, with the Forest Department accusing LGED of proceeding in defiance of those restrictions.
"There may have been a traditional route through the reserved forest for public movement," said M A Hasan, Divisional Forest Officer of the Chattogram Coastal Forest Division, "but the law does not permit its conversion into a paved road. Such a development would increase encroachment into the forest and place trees and wildlife under threat."
He added that any project inside a reserved forest needs approval from the head of government — approval that, in this case, was never granted.
But work has not stopped at the site. During a visit, we found labourers laying concrete and finishing culverts on sections of the road along level ground, where houses have already sprung up inside the forest boundary.
Maheshkhali Range Officer Humayun Kabir put the legal consequences plainly.
Destroying reserved forest land for any form of development or construction is a punishable offence under the law. LGED has been requested in writing on several occasions to stop the work, but those requests are being ignored.
"Destroying reserved forest land for any form of development or construction is a punishable offence under the law," he said. "LGED has been requested in writing on several occasions to stop the work, but those requests are being ignored."
LGED's own account is more procedural than defiant. Upazila Engineer Boni Amin Jony points out that the road is already listed in LGED's gazette records, and frames the project as a response to a long-standing local demand, now under the Southern Chattogram Regional Development Project.
"Progress has slowed because of the Forest Department's objections," he said. "The matter has been reported to the higher authorities." Once finished, he added, the road would bring real benefits — easier travel, better access to schools, hospitals and markets for people in Shaplapur, Kalarmarchhara and the surrounding area.
It was that public demand that pulled local MP Alamgir Muhammad Mahfuzullah Farid into the dispute. Towards the end of March, he sent a demi-official letter to the Forest Department, asking it not to obstruct the project. The department's written reply was explicit: "no paved road could be built inside a reserved forest without the Prime Minister's approval."
Our repeated attempts to reach the MP by phone for this story went unanswered.
Then, on 2 July, the dispute widened further. The Bangladesh Environmental Lawyers Association (BELA) sent letters to nine government offices — including the Forest Department and LGED itself — demanding the work be stopped and that action be taken.
BELA's letter goes beyond the question of procedure, alleging that LGED had already begun demolishing an old culvert inside the forest without the Forest Department's approval. It also warned that concreting the road could facilitate tree felling, hill-cutting and land encroachment, while potentially making it easier for timber smugglers and wildlife traffickers to move through a forest that remains home to deer, monkeys, pythons and dozens of bird species.
Sheikh Abul Kalam Azad, Assistant Conservator of Forests, put the stakes plainly. If LGED does not stop, he said, the department will pursue legal action. The forest, he added, is not just trees — it's a habitat, and a paved road running through it would only accelerate the encroachment and illegal settlement that have already begun to eat into its edges.
For the people actually living along that road, the argument sounds different — less like a legal question, more like a daily calculation of risk. Kabir Mahmud, who lives in Shaplapur, described what the monsoon does to the route now: patients unable to reach hospitals, students missing school, farmers stranded with produce they can't get to market. "Thousands of people would benefit if the road were paved," he said.
Sadequl Alam, from Kalarmarchhara, holds both truths at once. "We do not want the forest to be destroyed," he said. "But a durable road is also necessary for people's movement. The best solution would be to implement the project through an alternative design that protects the environment."
It is, perhaps, the most practical sentence anyone involved in this dispute has offered — an admission that the two sides might not be as irreconcilable as their letters suggest.
Abdul Khalek, chairman of Shaplapur Union Parishad, made a similar appeal, framing the road as a "long-standing demand of people from two unions" while insisting that development and forest protection are not mutually exclusive — provided the relevant agencies actually sit down together.
Environmental advocates are less willing to split the difference. Advocate Mujibul Haque of the Youth Environment Society called government-driven deforestation "alarming" precisely because it comes with institutional weight behind it. He argued that a project financed by an international partner like JICA should have cleared a proper environmental impact assessment before a single culvert was poured.
HM Faridul Alam Shaheen of Dharitri Rokkhay Amra pointed to what he saw as a contradiction: a sitting MP supporting a road project through a reserved forest while the government was simultaneously pursuing tree-planting and forest conservation initiatives nationwide.
