The environmental disaster that the wetland filling poses is multi-faceted: one, it chokes the capital city with perennial water-logging and disrupts the sewer system with attendant health hazards of all kinds. The overflowing sewage develops into deadly feces density. Constricted water flow in moribund water bodies force the geo-morphology to wilt.

There is no well equipped structural set up in the environmental department to fight off violation of wetland laws which are launched by local influential groups. We need environmental policing by some designated authority.

We agree with the Bapa president M A Muhith that the caretaker administration must now extricate Rajuk from its role as a real estate developer; instead enable it to play the role of 'a monitoring body enforcing city planning and design policies'.

Research statistics portray a horrific situation. Given the rate of 5.67 percent at which wetlands are disappearing in a year since 1999, there will be none left by the year 2037.

Housing projects are springing up without approval and this is where something can surely be done.

In the discussion on conservation of wetlands at the Brac Centre an idea that forces an introspection in the media cropped up. The speakers unanimously demanded that the newspapers and other media refrain from carrying advertisements of illegal real estate projects. It is the media that has played a pro-active role in bringing the environmental concerns at the centre stage of national discourse. Public have been sensitised about environmental issues. We must keep the good work going in all possible ways so that a powerful civic movement makes itself felt at the community level to stop the predators of environment on their tracks.