The government has planned to introduce the Bengal tiger to the densely deer-populated forests like Nijhum Dwip to boost tiger population as well as to maintain the balance of the ecosystem in the forests.
Environment and Forests Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud told a discussion at city’s Osmani Memorial Auditorium on Sunday morning.
The Department of Forest under the Ministry of Environment and Forests will organise the discussion, marking the Global Tiger Day – a global event to raise awareness for tiger conservation.
This year’s theme of the day is ‘Save Sundarbans Tiger Landscape’.
Environment and Forests secretary Mesbah ul Alam, vice chancellor of Dhaka University Prof Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique and IUCN country representative Ishtiaq Uddin Ahmad, forest conservator Tapan Kumar Dey and associate professor of Jahangirnagar University Dr Monirul Hasan Khan, among others, spoke at the discussion. Chief Conservator of Forest M Yunus Ali presided.
Speaking as the chief guest, Dr Hasan Mahmud said as the Forest Department has increased its vigilance in the forests to check wildlife poaching and smuggling and the deer are breeding in large numbers in the Nijhum Dwip every year, the deer population is increasing day by day in the forest.
Referring to the historical presence of the Bengal tigers in the country, the Environment and Forests Minister said once tigers were found all over the country, even near Dhaka, but there are now only 440 tigers in the Sundarbans, according to the Tiger Survey 2004.
He said the Global Tiger Initiative announced a plan to double the world’s tiger population by 2022, but it is quite impossible to increase tiger population that much in Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, due to its small size.
Terming the Sundarbans the world’s most densely tiger populated forest, Hasan Mahmud said one tiger lives on average in 200 square kilometers of forests in Russia where only 15-20 kilometers in the Sundarbans.
Tiger (Panthera tigris) population, on average, has declined 70 percent across the world, including Bangladesh, in the last 30 years, according to the Living Planet Report 2012.
The Living Planet Index for tigers in the Report said that forced to compete for space in some of the most densely populated regions on the earth, the tiger’s range has also declined to just 7 percent of its former extent.
Tigers are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN, 2011), and estimates endorsed by the Global Tiger Recovery Programme suggest there are only between 3,200 and 3,500 adult tigers remaining in the wild (Global Tiger Initiative, 2011).
Tigers are threatened by poaching, retaliatory killings, habitat loss and depletion of its prey base throughout its range. The most pronounced population declines, reported in recent years, are those located outside of the protected areas.
Source : Energy Bangla
