Upland protected areas in Bangladesh typically are small and include little if any undisturbed primary forest. Rather, they primarily comprise a gradation of cover types including agricultural settlements and permanent cropland areas, shrubland, scattered trees, open forest, short and long-rotation tree plantations, and limited closed forest areas. Even where natural forest cover remains it is typically fragmented, and understory and ground layers are disturbed. Previous and ongoing disturbance factors include conversion to agriculture, livestock grazing, burning, collection of fuelwood and non-timber forest products, selective felling for subsistence use, and conversion to tree plantations, the latter including periodic thinning and (potentially) clear-felling at maturity. The challenge in managing these protected areas is to understand the value of the various cover types to wildlife populations and to biodiversity conservation in general, and to ensure that vegetation cover is maintained accordingly.
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