Only some 100 tigers now roam the Sundarban forests of Bangladesh, a new survey has discovered, indicating far fewer big cats than previously thought in one of their largest global habitats.
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But experts said the reason for the huge drop in tiger numbers was better methodology.
“So, it didn’t give the exact figure of Sundarbans tigers”, he said.
More scientific method was used in the new Tiger census this year, which found only 106 big cats in the Sundarbans, and attributed its sharp fall in recent years to unchecked wildlife poaching, said forest conservator Dr Tapan Kumar Dey.
According to the tiger census conducted by the government in 2004, the Bangladesh part of the Sundarbans was a home to 440 tigers.
Professor Monirul Islam Khan of the zoology department of Jahangirnagar University conducted a tiger survey in the Sundarbans in 2006, assisted by British Zoological Society which showed the figure was no more than 200.
About 74 tigers have previously been counted on the Indian side of the Sundarbans, which makes up almost 40 per cent of the forest straddling both countries over 10,000 square kilometres. The largest population of Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) lives mostly in India, where there are 2,226, with smaller populations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China, and Myanmar.
Prof Khan said the government needed to do more to protect the animals, whose numbers were shrinking because of poaching and rapid development on the edge of the forest.
The World Wildlife Fund says tigers worldwide are in serious danger of becoming extinct. The pugmark tracking system used in 2004 wasn’t reliable, officials concluded, so cameras were installed in trees throughout the park for the survey.
YV Jhala, professor at the Wildlife Institute of India, told AFP the new figure was the “reality”. He is also urging authorities to better protect the big cats.
“This is the first ever effort to quantify tiger abundance in Bangladesh Sundarbans based on a robust scientific protocol using camera traps and double sampling approach”, the report said.
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But they add that lower numbers also reflect more accurate surveying techniques. These are even rarer than white tigers. Humans and the habitat loss that we create are the only threats to this lovely cat.
