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Flood threat
to Sundarbans tigers Port
Canning (West Bengal): Heavy downpour in Sundarbans raised river levels while
the gushing waters of flooded mangroves burst mud embankments in the extensive
delta region, destroying hundreds of thousands of houses. The Sunderbans mangrove
forest area, home to the highly endangered Royal Bengal tiger, has been fully
inundated and high-speed winds have destroyed all communication and transportation
infrastructure. Reviewing the situation, two days after the cyclone devastation,
Naveen Chandra Bahuguna, Chief Conservator of Forests, West Bengal and Director,
Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve said that although much damage has been done, there
are fairly good chances that tigers would survive. "There was lot of damage. But
tiger is a very strong animal. These natural conditions generally don't affect
tigers. In Sundarbans, they can swim long distances. So even if water is submerged
everywhere tiger can come to bank and some other area. The only problem is that
they may lose bearing. If they don't know in which direction they have to move
then they may die due exhaustion," said Bahuguna. He also mentioned that one tiger
ventured into human habitat at Jameswar village on Tuesday, was tranquillised
and taken into custody later. The entire Sunderbans biosphere reserve area of
9600 square kilometres has suffered extensive damage under the impact of cyclone
Aila. The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km 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 until the late 1960s, the Sundarbans today may
boast of just 250 to 270 tigers whereas the Indian Statistical Institute has computed
the census to be as low as 75. There were about 40,000 tigers in India a century
ago. A government census report published in 2008 says the tiger population has
fallen to 1,411, down from 3,642 in 2002, largely due to dwindling habitat and
poaching. -May
28, 2009 Go
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