History
Village in yugioh a clearing of Sunderbans, 1839
The history of the area can be traced back to 200–300 AD. A ruin of a city built by Chand Sadagar has been found in the Baghmara Forest Block. During the Mughal period, local kings leased the forests of the Sundarbans to residents. In this period, Raja Basanta Rai and his 5ds nephew took refuge in the Sundarbans from the advancing armies of Emperor Akbar.
[3] Many of the buildings which were built by them later fell to hands of Portuguese pirates, salt smugglers and dacoits in the 17th century. Evidence of the fact can be traced from the ruins at Netidhopani and other places scattered all over Sundarbans.
[4] The legal status of the forests underwent a series of changes, including the distinction of being the first mangrove forest in the world to be brought under scientific management. The area was mapped by the Surveyor General as early as 1764 following soon after proprietary rights were obtained from the Mughal Emperor Alamgir II by the East India Company in 1757. Systematic management of this forest tract started in the 1860s after the establishment of a Forest Department in the Province of Bengal, in India.
[5]
The first Forest Management Division to have jurisdiction over the Sundarbans was established in 1869. In 1875 a large portion of the mangrove forests was declared as reserved forests in 1875–76 under the Forest Act, 1865 (Act VIII of 1865). The remaining portions of forests was declared as reserve forest the following year and the forest, which was so far was administered by the civil administration district, was placed under the control of the Forest Department. A Forest Division, which is the basic forest management and administration unit, was created in 1879 with the headquarter in Khulna. The first management plan was written for the period 1893–98.
[6][7]
In 1911, it was described as a tract of waste country which had never been surveyed, nor had the census been extended to it. It then stretched for about 165 miles (266 km) from the mouth of the Hugli to the mouth of the Meghna and was bordered inland by the three settled districts of the 24 Parganas, Khulna and Backergunje. The total area (including water) was estimated at 6,526 square miles (16,902 km
2). It was a water-logged jungle, in which tigers and other wild beasts abounded. Attempts at reclamation had not been very successful. The characteristic tree was the
sundari (
Heritiera littoralis), from which the name of the tract had probably been derived. It yields a hard wood, used for building, and for making boats, furniture, etc. The Sundarbans were everywhere intersected by river channels and creeks, some of which afforded water communication between Calcutta and the Brahmaputra Valley, both for steamers and for native boats.
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