In the last few decades, the natural resource base of most developing countries has decreased alarmingly because of enormous population pressure and extreme poverty. Bangladesh is no exception, having lost most of its forest in the last 30 years. The Government of Bangladesh (GoB) has adopted various approaches to conserve the country's remaining biodiversity, including protected areas (PAs). However, the creation of PAs alone has not produced positive conservation results as expected, due to a purely ecological focus, which excluded the needs of local forest-dependent people. The introduction of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) for nature conservation in PAs is relatively new for Bangladesh compared to other South Asian countries, but it seems to have effected significant changes. The GoB recently adopted CBNRM in five of its PAs as part of a pilot program in collaborative management. This paper is a case study of the changing trends in PA management, people’s livelihoods and attitudes in and around one of these pilot sites. We observed that some change has already taken place in forest resource collection patterns and in the attitudes of people in the locality. People’s income sources and dependency on protected forests have also noticeably shifted away from the forest areas in the last year. Although gradual, people’s participation seems to be changing the direction of future forest conservation in Bangladesh. We conclude that bringing a larger number of people under various income generating schemes, clearly defining the rights and responsibilities of the local people in PAs, and ensuring more effective governance should be the next steps for the future of participatory management in the country.
