Lawachhara National Park: A wildlife treasure that needs serious conservation management
I hope that this coming winter, Lawachhara will once again reveal its little secret.
A journey from a student's first encounter with the forest to a race against time to rediscover a little-known amphibian
There are forests that we visit, forests that we study—and then there are forests that become part of our lives. Lawachhara is one of the latter for me.
My relationship with this remarkable forest began in February 1968, when I was a young B.Sc. student at Notre Dame College, Dhaka. More than half a century later, I returned once again—not simply as a visitor, but as the leader of a team of wildlife biologists searching for one of Bangladesh's least-known amphibians, the Fuller's Chikila (Chikila fulleri), locally known as Lawachharar Chikila.
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The contrast between those two journeys tells us much about how our forests—and our relationship with them—have changed.
My first Lawachhara
February 1968 was Language Martyrs' Month. On 18 February, a group of first- and secondyear Zoology-Botany students at Notre Dame College set off from the old Fulbaria Railway Station in Dhaka on a field excursion to southeastern and northeastern Bangladesh. Our renowned Professor Dwijen Sharma, assisted by our laboratory assistant James Master, accompanied us. We travelled on an extremely modest budget. The Director of Public Instruction had granted us only Tk 300 for the seven-day tour, while the college supported the teacher and laboratory assistant. The rest came from our own pockets.
After visiting Maheshkhali, Sonadia, Ramu and Cox's Bazar, we eventually travelled towards Sylhet and reached Srimangal after an arduous journey. There were virtually no hotels suitable for a group of 20 students in those days. We therefore spent the night on the bare floor of an empty municipal auditorium, wrapped in whatever warm clothing we had. The following morning, Professor Sharma announced that we would walk along the railway line for several kilometres to reach Lawachhara.
What happened when we entered the forest remains vivid in my memory.
The darkness beneath the dense canopy of the mixed-evergreen forest was almost intimidating. To a group of young students accustomed to the city, the forest seemed enormous and mysterious. Yet it was alive. We saw flocks of Red Junglefowl, Kalij Pheasant, Jungle Cat, numerous birds, lizards and an astonishing variety of butterflies.
At that time, parts of the forest had been regenerated through plantations established decades earlier. Although the original natural vegetation had been altered, after roughly 35–40 years the vegetation had developed many characteristics resembling a mixed-evergreen forest.
For a young zoology student, it was unforgettable.
More than 25 visits later
That first visit was only the beginning. After completing my PhD under the guidance of the legendary ornithologist Dr Salim Ali, I returned to Bangladesh in late 1977. Within the first fortnight, I was back in Lawachhara. Since then, I have probably visited the forest more than 25 times.
One reason Lawachhara has remained so important to generations of Bangladeshi wildlife biologists is its accessibility. It is one of the country's relatively intact forest remnants that can be reached fairly easily from Dhaka. But accessibility is also becoming one of its greatest problems.
A forest becoming an island
Lawachhara is biologically fascinating because it increasingly behaves like an ecological island. Although it forms part of the greater Patharia–Hararganj hill landscape, much of the surrounding area has been transformed into tea estates, settlements, roads and other humandominated land uses.
Nearby forests such as Satchhari, Rema-Kalenga, Adampur and Lathitila are no longer seamlessly connected to Lawachhara. For many wild animals, therefore, Lawachhara is not simply a patch of forest. It is a forest island surrounded by a human-dominated landscape.
This has serious ecological consequences.
When animals cannot move safely between forest blocks, populations become increasingly isolated. Movement of individuals, exchange of genes and recolonisation of areas where local populations disappear all become more difficult. Eventually, an isolated forest can become biologically impoverished even when its trees still look green.
Tourism: blessing and threat
Lawachhara has another unusual characteristic: it is exceptionally accessible by both road and railway. That accessibility has made it one of Bangladesh's most popular natural destinations. But a forest cannot absorb unlimited human pressure.
Poaching, illegal removal of timber, habitat degradation, encroachment and uncontrolled tourist pressure can gradually erode the ecological integrity of a forest without immediately making the damage visible to the casual visitor.
The irony is that the very qualities that attract visitors—its wildlife, dense vegetation, streams, butterflies and peaceful surroundings—are precisely the qualities that need protection.
Lawachhara still supports an impressive variety of wildlife, particularly relatively sedentary species such as frogs, reptiles, small mammals, birds and butterflies. But a national park cannot be judged simply by how green it looks from a tourist trail. Its ecological health must be assessed scientifically.
A tiny creature called Chikila
That brings me to one of my most intriguing experiences in Lawachhara.
In 2012, I collected a living specimen of a remarkable, little-known amphibian known as the Fuller's Chikila (Chikila fulleri). It does not look like the frogs most people know. It resembles a small worm: a cylindrical, limbless animal with no obvious tail. It belongs to a very unusual group of amphibians called caecilians.
The first dead specimen known to me had been found earlier by the late Tania Khan, which I identified. Later, I encountered three living specimens and collected one of this for scientific study
The species was subsequently assessed as Data Deficient in Bangladesh's 2015 Red List. That designation is important. "Data Deficient" does not mean that a species is safe. It means that we simply do not have enough information to determine how threatened it really is and that is precisely why we went looking for it again
Back to Lawachhara in 2026
As part of the 2026–27 Updating Faunal Red List of Bangladesh, a Bangladesh Government Project implemented through the Forest Department and the IUCN-Bangladesh, a team of 14 wildlife biologists, covering virtually all major vertebrate groups except fishes, together with butterfly specialists, travelled from Dhaka to Lawachhara on 11 August. After a long, exhausting journey, we barely had time to leave our belongings at the rest house before heading into the forest.
As evening descended, Lawachhara began to speak. From rain-filled pools, low-lying areas and small forest streams came the calls of the Sylheti Garbage Bang, or Sileti Aborjona Bang. For amphibian specialists, this was music.
A frog named after me
There was another personal moment of great interest. Bangladeshi amphibian researchers had previously described a tiny bush-dwelling frog and named it Reza Khan's Bush Frog (Raorchestes rezakani). I had never knowingly seen the species myself.
But members of our amphibian team reported hearing its calls at several locations during our survey, suggesting that it may be locally common. Its reproductive biology is particularly fascinating. Unlike most frogs and toads, whose eggs hatch into aquatic tadpoles that later metamorphose into frogs, this species lays eggs in water-retaining cavities such as hollows in trees or bamboo and in suitable slow-moving stream habitats. The eggs develop directly into tiny froglets, without a free-living tadpole stage.
Afterall nature has many ways of solving the same biological problem.
The forest after dark
Our survey produced a remarkable variety of observations. We found more than a dozen amphibian species, several lizards and skinks, moths, stick insects and longhorned grasshoppers. The forest was alive with the calls of crickets and cicadas.
We even encountered mating stick insects, in which the male was dramatically smaller than the female. Two species of longhorned grasshoppers produced surprisingly loud sounds mechanically, rather than through a vocal organ and then there were the leeches.
By the time we returned to the rest house after 9 pm, I discovered bloodstained socks, shirts and pyjamas. Seven land leeches had quietly taken their meal.
For a field biologist, this is simply part of the job.
The morning began with hoolock gibbons
The next morning, we entered the forest shortly after 6:30 am. Before we could begin our search for Chikila, the forest gave us a spectacular welcome. A pair of Critically Endangered Hoolock Gibbons was calling from the canopy. For more than half an hour we watched and photographed them.
The blackish male, with his prominent white eyebrows, moved effortlessly through the canopy, while the female was pale brown. They were feeding on ripening figs of a Ficus tree and displaying the extraordinary brachiation for which gibbons are famous—swinging from branch to branch using their long arms.
For a moment, our Chikila mission was forgotten. That is the magic of field biology: you may enter a forest looking for one species and discover ten others.
Lawachhara National Park has become a vital island of survival for Ulluk (Western Hoolock Gibbon, Hoolock hoolock) the critically endangered only lesser ape in the country. Even though the forest is completely cut off from surrounding woodlands, it supports Bangladesh's largest single population of these primates. Research by national wildlife biologists shows that out of roughly 380 Ulluks left in the entire country, nearly 50 find refuge in Lawachhara.
Searching for a species that may already be disappearing
Eventually, however, Rafik and I led the team towards the small forest stream—the chhara— where I had found the Chikilas in 2012 when Tania and Rafik were by my side as nearly half a dozen wildlife biologists from the forest department.
Fourteen years had passed. The old trail had almost disappeared. Storms, heavy monsoon rainfall, soil erosion, fallen trees and tangled vegetation had transformed the landscape. What had once been an easy trail used by dozens of visitors on weekdays and hundreds on holidays had become difficult to navigate.
We eventually relocated the secondary trail and reached the area where the Chikila had previously been found. We searched. We dug. We examined the soil and the stream margins. But there was no Chikila.
Why timing matters
At first, this was disappointing. But field biology requires us to understand what we do not find. Chikilas are highly specialised animals. They live underground and depend on particular soil conditions. During our monsoon survey, the normally suitable gently wet, relatively flat soil beside the small stream was largely submerged or saturated. This may explain why we failed to find them.
The species appears to require soft, moist soil, through which it can move like an earthworm. Excessively dry soil would be unsuitable, but prolonged inundation may also make the habitat unsuitable.
Interestingly, the three living individuals I encountered in 2012 were found during winter. Therefore, rather than declaring the species absent, we have chosen the scientifically more appropriate course to return to the site in winter.
The forest rewarded us anyway
Although the Chikila remained elusive, Lawachhara did not disappoint. We encountered three troops of Phayre's Leaf Monkey, a large troop of Pig-tailed Macaques, and two additional groups of Hoolock Gibbons. We recorded more than 100 bird species, around a dozen amphibian species, several reptiles, numerous butterflies, moths, spiders, crickets and other invertebrates.
During our nocturnal survey, we also encountered an extraordinary creature that looks like a cross between a scorpion and an insect: the whip scorpion. I had rediscovered this unusual animal in Lawachhara and Kalenga in 2010 after it had apparently gone unrecorded for many decades. Tt is not a true scorpion. Unlike scorpions, which have eight legs, whip scorpions have six legs and therefore belong to the class Insecta. Their bizarre appearance, pincers and whip-like appendage at the end of the abdomen make them one of the forest's most intriguing nocturnal inhabitants.
For our team, finding them was an unexpected bonus.
What did the survey tell us?
Across two nights and roughly one and a half days of fieldwork, we encountered an impressive cross-section of Lawachhara's biodiversity.
The most iconic discovery was undoubtedly the Hoolock Gibbon. We recorded seven individuals in a single day, together with four other primate species, squirrels, more than a hundred bird species, nearly a dozen amphibian species, several reptiles and a remarkable diversity of insects and other invertebrates. Yet we failed to find a single nocturnal mammal and most importantly, we failed to find the Chikila.
That failure is not necessarily bad news—but it is a warning.
Lawachhara needs management, not merely protection on paper
Lawachhara National Park should not be treated simply as a green space for recreation. It is a living biological laboratory and a refuge for species that may have nowhere else to go. Its ecological isolation makes it especially vulnerable. Its popularity makes it especially exposed. Its small size means that disturbance from roads, settlements, tourism and surrounding land use can have disproportionately large effects. Management therefore needs to go beyond conventional protection.
We need:
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systematic wildlife monitoring;
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regular population surveys;
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protection and restoration of small streams and wetlands;
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strict control of illegal hunting and timber extraction;
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scientifically managed tourism;
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restoration of degraded habitat;
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maintenance and restoration of ecological corridors with neighbouring forest blocks;
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long-term monitoring of amphibians, reptiles, primates and other less conspicuous wildlife; and
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special attention to species that are poorly known or already classified as Data Deficient.
Most importantly, what happens outside the boundary of the national park matters almost as much as what happens inside it.A forest island cannot remain healthy indefinitely if the surrounding ecological landscape continues to disappear.
The Chikila gives us a deadline—but also hope
For now, I remain optimistic. We will return to Lawachhara in winter when conditions may again become suitable for the Chikila. If we find it, it will be more than a personal triumph. It will confirm that this extraordinary amphibian still survives in Bangladesh and provide an opportunity to study its habitat, distribution and conservation needs. If we do not find it, the search must continue elsewhere.
We should never confuse failure to detect a species with proof of extinction but neither should we ignore repeated failures to find one.
Every species lost is not merely another name removed from a checklist. It represents the disappearance of a unique evolutionary history—a form of life that took millions of years to develop and which cannot be recreated once gone. That is why Lawachhara matters and that is why the little worm-like amphibian called Lawachharar Chikila matters.
For now, the search continues. I hope that this coming winter, Lawachhara will once again reveal its little secret.
Dr Reza Khan, wildlife, zoo and safari park specialist
