The Royal Bengal Tigers, one of the world's largest big cat populations, could disappear by the end of this century as rising sea levels caused by climate change destroy their habitat along the Sunderbans coast, according to a new WWF-led study published in the journal Climatic Change.
Tigers are among the world's most threatened species, with only an estimated 3,200 remaining in the world, including 400 plus in Bangladesh and India, said officials of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
"It's disheartening to imagine that the Sundarbans - which means 'beautiful forest' in Bangla - could be gone this century, along with its tigers,as the sea level is rising." said Colby Loucks, WWF-US deputy director of conservation science and the lead author of the study Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh's Sundarbans Mangroves.
An expected sea level rise of 28 cm above year 2000 levels may cause the remaining tiger habitat in the Sundarbans to decline by 96 percent, pushing the total population to fewer than 20 breeding tigers, according to the study.
Unless immediate action is taken, the Sundarbans, its wildlife and the natural resources that sustain millions of people may disappear within 50 to 90 years, the study states. While the tiger’s exact numbers are unclear, the tigers living in the Sundarbans of India and Bangladesh may represent as many as 10 percent of all the remaining wild tigers worldwide.
However, recent research suggests that the seas may rise even more swiftly than what was predicted in the 2007 IPCC assessment.
The study also recommended that the government and natural resource managers should take immediate steps to conserve and expand mangroves while preventing poaching and retaliatory killing of tigers.
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