Next stop: Bangladesh

After leaving Nepal, the next destination is Bangladesh. Here the first group I am going to follow is a husband and wife team, Rubaiyat and Elisabeth Mansur.

Rubaiyat and Elisabeth Mansur during an interview at their offices in 

Dhaka, Bangladesh (JLewis, TDRF)

Rubaiyat is the coordinator of research and Elisabeth of educational outreach for the Bangladesh Cetacean Diversity Project, which is a project under the Wildlife Conservation Society. The main office of operations for this team in in Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh). This is an important location because offices of resource management for the country are located here, which this team must work with to enact conservation strategies for the Ganges river dolphin in Bangladesh.

Thanks to the work of WCS and BCDP, three sanctuaries have been established recently (2012) in an area near the coast called the Sundarbans. While the limits of these protected areas have been drawn and agreed upon, the management plans for what to do to protect this species in these sanctuaries has yet to be developed. Therefore working closely with regulatory agencies is vital at this point.

Banks of river in Sundarbans at low tide (JLewis, TDRF)

The Sundarbans are the largest mangrove forest on the earth. This forest and the tributaries running through it are the end point of the Ganges river, which eventually dumps into the Bay of Bengal. 

Rubaiyat and Elisabeth work out of their home in Dhaka and have generously allowed me to live with them and their two small children while I work to document them and their work for the next few days.