Sunderbans Warms Up

As the midday sun beats down on the world’s largest tiger reserve,fisherman in a boat slowly manoeuvre their way through the mangrove forests fringing the Bay of Bengal.Twenty years ago,the fishermen said,they would never have been able to venture through the mangrove creek in eastern India to catch fish,too fearful of the tigers that stalked the area.But the mangrove cover is sparse now and the big cats have moved on in search of food.

Wildlife experts say rising sea levels and coastal erosion caused by global warming are steadily shrinking the mangroves of Sunderbans, threatening the survival of the endangered tigers.

“We are very concerned about the erosion level in tiger habitat,and we plan to increase mangrove cover in core areas to protect the tiger,” said Kanti Ganguly, minister for the Sunderbans in West Bengal.

The Sunderbans, once home to 500 tigers in the late 1960s, may only shelter between 250 and 270 tigers now, wildlife officials say, although the Indian Statistical Institute recently suggested the numbers could be significantly lower. The Tigers of the Sunderbans regularly swim between islands in search of food and sometimes stray into villages.It is the world’s largest mangrove reserve and one of the most unique ecosystems in South Asia, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But as sea levels rise, two islands have disappeared and others are vulnerable.The destruction of the mangroves has also adversely affected numbers of estuarine crocodiles, fish and big crabs, said Shakti Ranjan Banerjee, wildlife expert. That could leave the big cats hungry.

“We are worried about the tiger’s prey base and also the fact that the tiger habitat is shrinking due to rising sea levels,” Pradeep Vyas, the special chief conservator of forests, said.”But you cannot fight nature and must accept that the islands could submerge one day,” he said.

As sea levels rise, mangroves have been overexposed to salt water. Many plants have lost their red and green colours and are more like bare twigs, exposing tigers to poachers who hunt them for their skin and bones. Also, tigresses now have fewer places to hide their curbs from adult males,who seek to kill them in order to stem competition in the group, consevationists warn.

There were about 40,000 tigers in India a century ago, but decades of poaching and depletion of their natural habitat have cut their numbers to 3,700. some experts say the total could be as low as 1,200.



Source: Hindustan Times
Compiled By: Saurav Chakraborty