ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an insight of the biodiversity of Bangladesh, from ecosystem to species level, genetic diversity, and major threats to the biodiversity in the country with key initiatives so far taken for biodiversity conservation. The forests of Bangladesh cover three major vegetation type occurring in three distinctly different ecosystems, that is, hill forests; plain land Sal forests and mangrove forests. Bangladesh has a very rich in agro-biodiversity and supposed to have more than 8,000 rice varieties along with 3,000 crop varieties. Other than these more than 3000 varieties of pulses, 781 varieties of oilseed, 3516 vegetables, 156 spices, 89 fruits, are recorded alone by the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council. One of the major threats to aquatic biodiversity in Bangladesh is pollution of soil and water. The aquatic ecosystem is the greatest victim and is polluted by toxic agrochemicals and industrial effluents that cause depletion of aquatic and/or marine biodiversity.
