Bangladesh, the world largest deltaic region, lies in the northeastern part of South Asia. The country has ratified most of the international treaties and conventions related to conservation of biodiversity. Over the past few decades, biodiversity has become the issue of global concern due to its rapid reduction worldwide.

Bangladesh is no exception. The country is exceptionally endowed with a vast variety of flora and fauna, but due to country's tremendous population pressure, rural poverty and unemployment it has been decreased alarmingly. Government has taken various initiatives to alter this situation. The present paper is based on intensive literature survey and tries to explore the country's overall biodiversity situation, biodiversity-development links, present trends and causes of depletion of biodiversity, biodiversity conservation initiatives in the country, major policy and legislation to conserve biodiversity, biodiversity research initiatives, prosperous sector of biodiversity etc. Finally the study concludes that, a separate statutory body or institution is fundamental to ensure conservation; sustainable use and equitable sharing of benefits arisen from biodiversity products and benefits in the country.

Ecologically Bangladesh supports a diverse set of ecosystems. The country, has the world’s largest continuous mangrove forest – The Sundarbans on its southwestern part- habitat of the world’s largest surviving population of the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris); in its eastern part it has a large tract of evergreen to semi-evergreen hill forests, once very rich in biodiversity but mostly degraded now; besides in the north-eastern part there are many wetlands, locally called haors that harbor a huge number of aquatic plants, migratory birds and freshwater fish species.The forests of Bangladesh cover three major vegetation type occurring in three distinctly different ecosystems, i.e. hill forests (evergreen to semi-evergreen); plain land Sal (Shorea robusta) forests and mangrove forests. Although, once very rich in biodiversity during the last few decades all forest and ecosystems of the country have been heavily degraded. There have some contradictions on the actual forest coverage of the country. Although the official forest coverage is 2.53 million representing nearly 17.5% of the country’s total land area, only 1.52 million ha of them are under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department.. In addition to that, most of the forests of the country are geographically located only in few districts and are poorly stocked.