DHAKA: The number of Royal Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans mangrove forest in the Bay of Bengal is decreasing at an alarming rate. Both government and NGOs say there are just 121 tigers left in the Sundarbans.
Bangladesh’s Forest Department and international agencies have launched several initiatives to help protect this endangered species. While the Bengal tiger is believed to be the most numerous of tiger species, there are only around 2,500 remaining in the wild, according to the World Wildlife Fun (WWF).
Bangladeshi zoologist Abdul Aziz recently completed research for his doctoral thesis on tigers in the Sundarbans, and his survey of 2,000 sq. km of the Sundarbans — a UNESCO World Heritage site — confirmed that 121 Bengal tigers live in the forest.
“It was a Herculean job,” Aziz told Arab News. “Fifty-six local people worked with me for six months to collect the tigers’ feces and fur from the Sundarbans. This was the first time genetic screening technology was employed to make a census of the tiger population in the mangrove forest. Earlier, researchers used camera trapping to investigate the population since every tiger bears some unique stripes on its face and tail area.” It took a further two years for laboratories in the US and Europe to analyze all the samples collected by Aziz and his team.
Jahidul Kabir of the Bangladesh Forest Department’s Wildlife and Nature Conservation Circle told Arab News: “We can say (there are) between 101 and 121 Royal Bengal tigers in Sundarbans.” The deparment’s last tiger census, in 2015, put the number at 106.
The department will implement a five-step action plan next year, he said, focusing on tiger protection, strengthening resources, engaging local residents, education outreach, and research and monitoring.
“In the next five years, we plan to spend 400 crore taka ($50 million) on the conservation of the Sundarbans and Bengal tigers,” he added.
According to Anowarul Islam, the chief executive of conservation organization Wild Team, tiger movement in the Sundarbans offered cause for optimism between 2009 and 2012, when “the situation went bad.” However, he added that, this year, the situation has stabilized.
Between 1975 and 2006, censuses show that there were between 200 to 450 Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans, so there has been a marked decrease in numbers in recent years, even while — according to the WWF — 13 tiger-populated countries including India, Russia and Bhutan have managed to increase their tiger numbers between 2011 and 2016.
There are explanations for why the Sundarbans have not seen a similar upward trend in tiger numbers, said Ishtiak Uddin Ahmed, Bangladesh’s country manager for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), while stressing that — because a tiger’s “home range” is typically 20-to-25 sq. km, and because of the “ecological situation” in the mangrove forest — the Sundarbans could only support a maximum of 300 tigers.
Destruction of their habitat, scarcity of food, and poaching are three of the main reasons why the local tiger population is diminishing, he said, adding: “Another reason is the increased frequency of natural calamities, especially heavy cyclones, which is an adverse impact of global climate change.”
Bangladesh striving to save endangered Bengal tigers
Bangladesh striving to save endangered Bengal tigers
Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage
KHARKIV: Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.
An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defense systems.
“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media.
“Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.
Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.
The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Daily attacks
Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.
The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 247 drones.
The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.
White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building occupied by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.
Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.
The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.
Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.
Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war.”
Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.
