Climate change is driving increase in tiger attacks

New Scientist: The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India's Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food, conservation experts say. Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world's largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers' natural habitat.

The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km area of low-lying swamps on India's border with Bangladesh, is dotted with hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels. "In the past six months, seven fishermen were killed in an area called Netidhopani," says Pranabes Sanyal of the World Conservation Union.

"Owing to global warming, the fragile Sundarbans lost 28% of its habitat in the last 40 years. A part of it is the core tiger reserve area from where their prey migrated." But as sea levels rise, two islands have already disappeared and others are vulnerable. Wildlife experts say the destruction of the mangroves means the tigers' most common prey, such as crocodiles, fish and big crabs, is dwindling….

Get out of my habitat. This is a Malayan tiger, shot by B_cool from SIN, Singapore, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License