Tuesday, January 26, 2010

WWF: Sunderbans tigers face extinction

New Tang Dynasty Television: According to the World Wildlife Fund, or WWF, the Sunderbans Royal Bengal tiger may only be found in zoos by the end of this century.

[Colby Loucks, World Wildlife Fund]: "If we don't do anything to limit the impact of climate change and in this case sea-level rise or protect the tigers from more immediate threats such as poaching and habitat loss, the Sunderbans and its tigers will go under water in the next 50 to 90 years is what our study found."

Through habitat loss and poaching, the tigers are already one of the world's most threatened species. The WWF estimates that the entire global tiger population totals only 3,200 in the wild. It says nowhere are they more vulnerable than in the Sunderbans.
The Sunderbans in Bangladesh is the world's largest mangrove forests and provides a habitat for about ten percent of the global Royal Bengal tiger population. A recent WWF study says that rising waters will submerge the area by the end of the century. The report says an 11 inch rise in sea level - a rate they describe as conservative - is likely by 2070. By then, Sunderban tiger populations are "unlikely to remain viable."…

Panthera tigris corbetti (seen here at the Houston Zoo) is from the Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world, which spread across areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Shot by Cburnett, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License

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