Environmental conservation in Bogalay Township

This post presents an article from The Voice Weekly, April 25 - May 1, page 15, regarding NGO projects aimed at environmental conservation in the area of Beautiful Lady Island (Mainma-hla-kyon), Bogalay Township, Irrawaddy Region.

Vocabulary:

ဂေဟ ။
စွမ်းရည် ။ ability, prowess
ဖောင်ဒေး ။ plentiful
လဆန်း ။ waxing of the moon, beginning of the month
ထင်းခုတ်ခြင်း ။ the chopping of wood
သားကောင် ။ game animal, prey
တစ်နိုင်တစ်ပိုင် ။
ကမ်းနား ။ waterfront
သဟဇာတ ။ compatibility
အလေးထား ။ give special consideration
ပြေလည် ။ (of problems, difficulties, debts, etc) be resolved, reconciled
အလတ်စား ။ medium size
ချုံပုတ် ။ clump of bushes
ဒသမ ။ decimal point
မျိုးစိတ် ။ species

Translation:

3 NGOs will join together to conserve the area of 15 villages near Beautiful Lady Island

Yangon, April 5

In 15 villages in the area near Beautiful Lady Island, Bogalay Township, Irrawaddy Region, the Economy and Refuge System Development Organisation (Eco Dev), the Nargis Action Group (NAG) and people of much ability are joining together to conduct environmental conservation work beginning at the start of April, said the director in charge U Win Myo Thu to The Voice Weekly.

[U Win Myo Thu] said that because of the impact on the natural environment of the island from chopping wood, cultivating sea sesame, searching for game animals, and such income generating activities by locals from the aforementioned villages in the area of Beautiful Lady Island, doing environmental conservation and socially beneficial economic developments will reduce the impact on the affected natural environment on Beautiful Lady Island, and will benefit the environmental conservation of that island; and the aforementioned work will be done for three years and environmental conservation awareness raising classes, as much environmental conservation tree planting in the eroded waterfront areas as can be done, horticulture, prawns compatible with this mangrove, and crab husbandry will be works that will cause an increase in trees closely related to this kind of climatic region.

It is known from [U Win Myo Thu] that among that the 35 villages that will experience benefits on Beautiful Lady Island in Bogalay Township, in accordance with the [amount of] supporting funds [activities] will be carried out in the 15 villages closest to Beautiful Lady Island.

"Starting from after [Cyclone] Nargis, we have of course given special consideration to forests and trees. However, afterwards, since the economic problems are not resolved, this has impacted the trees of Beautiful Lady Island, which can be freely taken," said [U Win Myo Thu].

"Although the big trees that I saw when I arrived on one occasion in 2007 cannot be seen, medium sized trees can still be seen. After Nargis, as a result of having repeatedly gone [to Beautiful Lady Island] in 2010 and only seeing small trees and clumps of bushes, [I] asked locals [what the reason for this was, and they said] because of Nargis this mangrove is all gone, after Nargis [people] cut down trees to build houses, because the economy has not recovered [people] make charcoal, [and] because of cutting down and selling trees," said a 24-year-old woman who has twice been to Beautiful Lady Island to study environmental conservation.

In 1986, [when] there was no danger [to the environment], Beautiful Lady Island, which [the government] began to demarcate, had an area of 52.79 square miles and species of mangrove trees such as as Pyu, Pyu Foot, Lamu, Lame, Kanaso and Madama grew.