Home Gardening for Biodiversity Conservation in Kalaroa Upazila of Satkhira District, Bangladesh

Abstract

Agroforestry homegardens are important repository of useful plants in most tropical and subtropical world. Home gardens, which are maintained by at least 20 million households, represent possible strategies for livelihood provision, environmental amelioration and perhaps more importantly biodiversity conservation in Bangladesh.Having no accessible natural forests, majority people of Satkhira District in Bangladesh are heavily depend on home gardens to meet their basic forest resources need. This study investigated the existing useful plant resources, its utilization and conservation importance of home gardens in Kalaroa Upazila of Satkhira District, Bangladesh. All useful plants were censused, totalling 270 species including four threatened from 50 randomly selected home gardens totalling 9.29 ha area. Of the 270 species, 108 trees, 53 shrubs, 67 herbs, and 42 woody and non-woody climbers. All the recorded plant species were classified into nine main usage categories where 36species were multipurpose. Home gardens accounted for about 18% of household’s total annual income. Maintaining high species richness, home gardens in the study area are representing biodiversity hotspot through use in Bangladesh. Despite the high species richness majority species in the home gardens was rare.Thus, serious effort must be taken to increase the population density of most species to determine whether home gardens indeed act as long-term source to livelihood options, climate resilience, and biodiversity conservation in Bangladesh.