ENVIRONMENT-SOUTH ASIA:
World's Largest Hunt on for Tiger Pugmarks
Suman K Chakrabarti
SUNDERBANS, India, Feb 18 (IPS) - Since mid-January, they have been combing
through the maze of rivers and creeks and mangroves that form the Indian
Sunderbans, armed with fiberglass vests, steel helmets, firecrackers, nylon
nets and rifles.
They are out on a hunt - not for the world's largest man-eaters but for
their pugmarks. They are now set to move on to the Bangladesh side of the
Sunderbans, or 'beautiful forests', between Feb. 20 and 25.
They are part of the world's biggest ever tiger counts in one of the
most unique ecosystems on the planet, spread over 4,262 square kilometres.
The Bangladesh operations, funded by the United Nations, will use
similar methodology and involve officials from West Bengal's forest
department to retrieve pugmarks using liquid plaster of Paris.
The Sunderbans, spread over India and the southern tip of Bangladesh, is
a protected ecosystem dotted with mangrove forests and criss-crossed by
creeks and tributaries of rivers flowing into the Bay of Bengal. It is home
to the largest number of tigers in the world in a single geographical area.
Though conservation efforts in the Sunderbans, declared a World Heritage
Site in 1984, have been mainly limited to the Royal Bengal Tiger, census
figures have been hardly encouraging. But this is the first time in history
a proper census is being undertaken in the Bangladeshi Sunderbans.
Many like Pranabesh Sanyal, additional principal chief conservator of
forests in West Bengal, feel that the dwindling number of tigers might be
due to the fact that the world's largest delta, the Sunderbans, is divided
between two countries - India and neighbouring Bangladesh.
"The census conducted earlier were probably inaccurate, because some
tigers were missed out and others were counted twice as they crossed from
one country to the other," Sanyal told IPS.
That is why, during the census operation on the Indian side, officials
from Bangladesh participated to learn about the census methodology used in
Indian Sunderbans.
Atanu Kumar Raha, chief conservator of forests of West Bengal, explains
that they need a cross-border census to ensure more accurate counting as it
is one single ecosystem. "Tigers, unlike us, fail to demarcate the
political borders," he said.
In Bangladesh, where no regular census operations are carried out,
officials estimate there are close to 400 Royal Bengal tigers living in its
6,000 sq km area of the Sunderbans, down from around 700 in the 1990s.
Poaching and illegal logging have affected the habitat of the Royal
Bengal tigers, Bangladesh's national animal, in the mangrove forest,
reducing their number in both India and Bangladesh in the past decade.
Razia Quadir of Dharitri (The Earth), a non-governmental group involved
in the Bangladeshi census, says that the census, for the first time, is
being conducted to "ensure the survival of the endangered Royal Bengal
Tiger from poaching and loss of habitat, both in Bangladesh and India."
Bangladesh's national animal is regularly poached for skins and bones used
in traditional medicine.
Scientists also say that the tigers are forced to leave their habitat in
West Bengal and move inside Bangladesh as sweet water sources within the
mangrove forests of Indian Sunderbans dry up.
Illegal felling of trees in the past century and reclamation of land for
human settlement have reduced the total mangrove cover from 9,630 sq km to
4,266.6 sq km in the Indian Sunderbans.
Since the first settlements in 1770, population in the Indian Sunderbans
has risen by 200 percent to nearly 4.3 million. Scientists say that this
has brought changes in the ecosystem and the flora of the forest.
According to Shireen Kamal Sayeed, Bangladesh representative of the U.N.
Development Programme, the Bangladesh census would have wildlife experts
collate data emerging from either part of the forest to provide the
clearest picture on the wild cats within the next six months.
But already, after the Indian census, forest officials believe that the
population of the big cats is on the rise. Raha, also the director of
Sunderbans Biosphere Reserve, said that census teams have collected 1250
pugmarks, including many of cubs "proving that the population is thriving''.
"It is an encouraging trend to see that that we have collected about 20
percent more pugmarks than the last time. And the wild cats seem to have a
stable population, at least in India," Raha told IPS.
Since 1989, the number of wild cats in Indian Sunderbans has been, at
best, dwindling. While in 1989, it was 353, the figure came down to 335
during the 1993 census, rose to 361 during 1997 and came down to 280 - 103
male, 144 female and 33 cubs, in 2002.
But the pugmark technique, India's traditional tiger census method, has
been termed faulty by a team of Indian and U.S. researchers.
Using the pugmark technique, the current official tiger population in
the wild in India has been plugged at 3,624.
N V Raja Shekar, joint director of the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve,
agrees there are questions but says there are few options. ''At least, by
using this methodology, we are able to get to a certain figure, but the
problem lies in the fact that the technique is based on indirect evidences
because of the difficulties in the actual sighting of the tiger," he adds.
Under this technique, tiger pugmarks are taken using plaster of Paris
casts and data about its features fed into a computer for analysis.
There are lessons also in reports of tigers killing about 50 people
every year on the Indian side of the Sunderbans. Though they attack
villages sometimes, most victims are honey collectors and woodcutters who
work deep inside the tigers' natural habitat. Last year, Royal Bengal
tigers in the area killed at least six villagers.
Raja Shekar said one of the most important objective of the study is to
find out why tigers are turning into man-eaters, as human beings are not a
natural diet for tigers. "It turns into a man-eater only under
extraordinary situations, like when it grows too infirm or disabled to hunt
or when there is a scarcity of its natural prey," he said.
(END/2004)
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