Global warming destroys world's largest tiger reserve
Pastor Dale Morgan
Global warming destroys world's largest tiger reserve*
By Bappa Majumdar
Reuters
Monday, February 26, 2007; 11:00 PM
SUNDERBANS TIGER RESERVE, India (Reuters) - As the midday sun beats down
on the world's largest tiger reserve, fishermen in a small wooden boat
slowly manoeuvre their way through the mangrove forests fringing the Bay
of Bengal.
Twenty years ago, the fishermen say 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 for prey and shelter.
But the once lush, dense mangrove cover is sparse now -- reduced to
decaying branches -- and the big cats have now moved on in search of
food and protection.
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 at the erosion level in tiger habitat, and we are
planning to increase mangrove cover in core areas to protect the tiger,"
said Kanti Ganguly, minister for the Sunderbans in India's West Bengal
state.
The Sunderbans, a 26,000 square km (10,000 square mile) area of
low-lying swamps on India's border with Bangladesh, is dotted with
hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels.
Once home to 500 tigers in the late 1960s, the Sunderbans 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. They are known to have killed at
least 50 people over the last five years.
The area 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 already disappeared and others
are vulnerable.
The destruction of the mangroves has also adversely affected numbers of
estuarine crocodiles, fishes and big crabs, said Shakti Ranjan Banerjee,
wildlife expert and former secretary of conservation group WWF.
That could leave the big cats hungry.
"We are very worried about the tiger's prey base which may not be
breeding as we liked and also the fact that the tiger habitat is
shrinking due to rising sea levels," Pradeep Vyas, the special chief
conservator of forests, told Reuters.
"But you cannot fight nature and must accept the inevitable 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 colors 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 cubs from adult
males, who seek to kill them in order to stem competition in the group,
conservationists 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 wildlife experts say the total could be as low as 1,200.