Tigers in Trouble: Rising Seas Will Submerge Habitat of Sundarbans Tigers of Bangladesh

The Sundarbans delta, at the mouth of the Ganges river, is site of the largest mangrove forest in the world and home to the unique Sundarbans tiger.   In "Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh’s Sundarbans Mangroves" [PDF], published in the first 2010 issue of Climatic Change, the authors use high resolution elevation data to determine that with a 28 cm rise above 2000 sea levels, "remaining tiger habitat in Bangladesh’s Sundarbans would decline by 96% and the number of breeding individuals would be reduced to less than 20."  There presently are between 254 and 432 tigers in the Sundarbans.

WWF scientists Colby Loucks and Shannon Barber-Meyer join their coauthors in noting that at the rates of sea level rise projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007), a 28 cm sea level rise might be realized around 2070.  However research more recent than that used in the last IPCC assessment suggests that seas may rise much more quickly than that.

"Like the sea-ice of the Polar Bear, the mangrove forest of the Sundarbans tiger is one of the habitats most immediately threatened as global temperatures rise during the course of this century," says Keya Chatterjee, acting director of WWF's climate change program.  "To avoid ecological catastrophe on a much larger scale we must quickly slow the pace of climate change by sharply reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and prepare for the impacts of climate change we fail to avoid.  That requires the U.S. to pass climate legislation and to reach an effective international agreement this year -- the Chinese year of the tiger."

Interactive: Decline in tiger habitat
in Sundarbans, Bangladesh

The authors conclude:

"The Sundarbans and its biodiversity is critical to the survival of millions of Bangladeshis (and Indians) who share the coast and benefit from the ecosystem services (e.g. protection from cyclones, food and building supplies, fisheries, and carbon cycling) the Sundarbans provide . As such, strategies to conserve the Sundarbans must begin as soon as possible . Potential adaptation activities to conserve tigers need to focus on conserving both their mangrove refuge and the prey on which they depend. Globally, action should include limits on carbon emissions to slow climatic change. Regionally, potential adaptation activities should focus on better coordination among neighboring countries to identify mechanisms that would increase sediment delivery and freshwater flows to the coastal region to support agriculture and replenishment of land. Locally, management activities that conserve habitat or limit threats include building dykes, developing and planting mangroves that can adapt to the rising seas and changing salinity, and limiting poaching or retaliatory killing of tigers and their prey."

• Climate Change Threatens to Wipe Out One of World's Largest Tiger Populations this Century. WWF press release, 20 January 2010.
• Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh’s Sundarbans Mangroves. A letter by Colby Loucks, Shannon Barber-Meyer, Md. Abdullah Abraham Hossain, Adam Barlow and Ruhul Mohaiman Chowdhury.  Climatic Change, vol. 98: 291-298 (2010).
• Watch Video: Decline in tiger habitat in Sundarbans, Bangladesh
• Year of the Tiger
• Climate Change 2007: Working Group II: Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability.  Chapter 10: Asia.  Section 10.4.3 Coastal and low lying areas .  By the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
• Other WWF:
  • Bengal Tiger:Most numerous tiger pushed out of its home. 
  • Sundarbans Mangroves
  • Vulnerable Sundarbans Islanders use Technology Against Climate Change Threats. 
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    • Tulsi Khara