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World Tiger Day

Tiger population in Sundarban rises by 8-10pc in 2024

Published : Tuesday, 30 July, 2024 at 12:00 AM  Count : 742
Shahnaj Begum
Tiger (big cat) population has increase in the Bangladesh portion of the Sundarban, marks eight to ten per cent jump in 2024, as the conservation efforts involved the local communities to conserving tigers, abolish their previous mentality of enmity against tiger.

According to the last survey conducted in 2023-24, the number of tigers in Bangladesh's Sundarban is 118-122, however, last survey conducted in 2018, it found only 114 tigers remain in the Bangladesh portion of the Sundarban, compared to 440 in 2004.

"As a major tiger habitat country, Bangladesh has been spending a remarkable amount of money to protect the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) for the last two decades; however, the population of the big cat has dropped during this period," M Monirul H Khan, a professor of zoology at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka told the Daily Observer on Monday, the World Tiger Day.

He thanked the local community for crash enmity against tiger and the government as the fencing plan as an effective means to address the problem as fencing will both keep tigers out of human settlements, and humans and their domestic animals out of tiger habitat. 

"Now the local communities came forward to conserving tigers as their mentality of enmity against the big cats is no more, data showed that about 300 people and 46 tigers have been killed since 2000 in human-tiger conflicts in Bangladesh's Sundarban. Poaching, human-tiger conflict and natural disasters have contributed to the rapid decline of the big cats in the Sundarban, Bangladesh's only natural tiger habitat," he added.

The move is part of the Bangladesh Forest Department's three-year "Sundarban Tiger Conservation Project," launched in March 2022, and is aimed at keeping tigers and humans out of each other's spaces. Authorities installed nylon net fencing in the Sundarban, to tackle human-tiger conflicts and protect both communities and the endangered big cats.

"Initially, we will erect polypropylene net fencing over 60 kilometers [37 miles] in the Sundarban. And the installation work of net fencing begun in 2023-2024," project director Abu Naser Mohsin said.
In Bangladesh, Sundarban is the only place where the Bengal tiger lives. Three portions of the mangrove forest are designated as wildlife sanctuaries, but none are specifically dedicated to the tiger.

Along with Bangladesh, Bengal tiger habitats exist in the neighboring countries of India, Nepal, Bhutan and Myanmar.

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in China, Russia, India, Nepal and Bhutan are either steady or growing. WWF also estimates there are 5,574 tigers in the wild in 13 countries worldwide.

Bangladesh shares most (60 per cent) of the world's largest mangrove forest with neighboring India. This mangrove forest is the habitat of many wild animals, including the big cat. In Bangladesh, the mangrove is the only habitat for the Bengal tiger, which has been declared an endangered species by the International Union for the conservation of nature (IUCN).

The Bangladesh government declared 52 per cent of the Sundarban (6,017 square kilometers or 2,323 square miles) as protected areas in 2020, up from 23 per cent earlier. The Bangladesh authority declared three sanctuaries for wildlife in the Sundarban, but not specifically for tigers.

"There are three wildlife sanctuaries in the Sundarban. East, west and south sanctuaries have been declared for all wildlife but not particularly for tigers, said Mihir Kumar Doe, forest department has said. 

"We have to remember that the human population in the area is growing, with communities largely dependent on the forest for their livelihoods. That makes overexploitation of natural resources, land reclamation, pollution, fishing and farming among the key drivers of the mangrove's degradation and at the same time large swaths of the Sundarban are also drying up as the rivers and channels that feed into it fill up with sediment, that is also a great risk for rising sea level, however, all these things are against the tiger habitant," M Monirul H Khan has said.



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