Source: news.bbc.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, December 2009: Climate change is forcing humans and tigers in the Sunderbans delta of eastern India into closer contact – and attacks on people are on the rise. Royal Bengal tigers which roam through the vast mangrove forests at the mouth of the river Ganges are coming into closer contact, and conflict, with humans. Dozens of people are killed every year by tigers in the Sundarbans. And local villagers say the number of attacks is increasing.
The last official census in the Sundarbans, carried out in 2004, suggested that there were 279 tigers in the forests. “Our basic message is if you save the tiger, the mangrove will be saved, and the mangrove will save you,” says Col. Shakti Banerjee of the Wildlife Preservation Society of India.
Col. Banerjee also points out that nearly all the attacks occur when humans enter the forests, not when tigers intrude into the villages. But there’s little doubt that the two species have to co-exist in a shrinking space.
“Climate change is causing accelerated sea level rise and an increase in the salinity of the southern Sundarbans,” says Professor Pranabes Sanyal of Jadavpur University in Calcutta. “That in turn is causing the migration of the tigers from the southern islands towards the north, close to the human habitation. That’s why we have this man-animal confrontation – and the confrontation is increasing.”