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None of the two agreements signed between Bangladesh and India on conservation of the Sundarbans and Royal Bengal Tigers addresses the issue of increasing salinity that continues to affect the biodiversity of the mangrove forest on Bangladesh side. Salinity in Pashur, Sibsa and Raimongal rivers running through the Sundarbans has increased over the years, as flow of water in the Gorai river has decreased due to the Farakka barrage on the upstream.However, the agreement on biodiversity says none of the two countries will do anything that may have an adverse impact on biodiversity and ecosystem — one of the main obligations of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992.
Both Bangladesh and India are parties to the convention that obliges them to maintain natural water flow in river catchment areas to conserve regional ecology and biodiversity.
According to Article 3 of the convention, no country should take any step that may harm the biodiversity of another country.
Noted environmentalist Ainun Nishat said the flow of the Gorai river reduced drastically in 1975 resulting in a rise in salinity in the Sundarbans after the construction of the Farakka barrage in 1973.
Mentioning salinity as a major threat to biodiversity in the Sundarbans, Nishat, vice chancellor of Brac University, said this type of agreement cannot ignore the issue of salinity.
Asif Nazrul, an expert on water treaty, said, “The main issue regarding the Sundarbans should be adequate flow of water in rivers and canals. If India follows the convention, it should not disturb the natural flow of trans-boundary rivers.”
But the convention’s main spirit is absent in the agreement on conservation of the Sundarbans, a freshwater mangrove forest, he said.
The environment and forest ministry in its initial draft of the agreement on biodiversity mentioned the issue of ensuring flow of freshwater in the Sundarbans to protect its biodiversity, said a high-up of the ministry, preferring anonymity.
“But the Indian Ministry of Environment and Forest did not agree with the clause saying it is not in their jurisdiction,” said the official.
“They said if the clause is kept, the Indian Ministry of Water Resources has to be engaged in the process. In that case, it will take a longer time to reach a consensus over the issue.”
It is very crucial to conserve the biodiversity of the Sundarbans, as it is a transitional zone between freshwater from rivers and saline water of the Bay of Bengal, say experts.
The Sundarbans that stretches over an area of 10,000 square kilometres in the two countries is the habitat for more than 600 Royal Bengal Tigers. There have been reports that the tigers are being affected by rising salinity in water in the forest.
According to a report, nearly 20 million Sundari trees suffer from top dying — a disease resulted from increased salinity in water.
Some experts say Royal Bengal Tigers suffer from various diseases for drinking saline water. It has also caused a change in their behaviour.
Prof Anwarul Islam, coordinator of the Sundarbans Tiger Project in Bangladesh, said it should be studied properly how increasing salinity has been affecting Tigers in the mangrove forest.
“There is no detailed study on impacts of salinity on tigers. We should conduct a detailed study on this,” he said.
But the issue was left out of the recent agreement “Conservation of the Royal Bengal Tiger of the Sundarbans” that talks of exchange of forest personnel between the two countries for training and education purposes.
Officials say the deal would create scope for joint projects on scientific research on tigers and the Sundarbans ecosystem.
They say the agreement on conservation of Royal Bengal Tigers could help check poachers and illegal wildlife trade in the Sundarbans.
Forest officials said the protocol would ensure engagement of paramilitary border guards of the two countries in the protection of tigers and wildlife.
Poachers have been on the prowl for tigers in the Sundarbans for increasing demand for tiger flesh and bone that are believed to have medicinal properties.
According to the tenets of Chinese medicine, not only the skin but almost all parts of a tiger have medicinal properties.
In July, three poachers were arrested with four deer heads and 60 kilograms of venison in Bagerhat. They confessed to trading tiger hides.
On February 17, forest officials arrested a poacher with four tiger skulls, 138 bones and hides of three tigers in Bagerhat.
In 2009, Rab seized a tiger hide and arrested three people in Khulna.
At least 29 tigers have been beaten to death by locals since 2000 while some were found dead in the Sundarbans, show records of the forest department.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
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Tigers are maverick animals. They are supposed to live long in this world. Instead, they are disappearing rapidly. No doubt celebrating ‘tiger day’ will raise awareness to safeguard this majestic animal; however, we hope the affiliated institutions will continue creating a congenial environment for safety and sustainability of tiger population.Commonly such safety and protection are provided through declaring protected areas (PAs) like game reserves, wildlife sanctuary, and even national parks. There are overlapping forest reserves and tiger reserves in the Sunderbans as well. The overlapping is because what is for the Sunderbans is for Tiger and what is for Tiger is for the Sunderbans. The Sunderbans and Tigers are inseparable. We wish that the ‘tiger day’ will benefit both Tigers and the Sunderbans.
However, in Bangladesh situation continuing relationship between Forest Departments (FD) in charge of PAs and the local communities living in and around PAs are discouraging. The approach of PA management in Bangladesh is different from western approach. Western PAs constitute creating pristine zones by excluding local communities whereas Bangladesh PAs invite active participation of communities. Of course people do participate in western PAs as well but such participation is spontaneous and influenced by consciousness; whereas, participation in our country is operational and induced by motivation.
Despite illegitimate human killing is considered as the main reason of tiger disappearance. The Balinese tiger was extinct long ago in 1930s due to hunting. Caspian and Java tiger are also extinct due to human pressure. The extinction of Java tiger is very recent only in 1970s. In that regard the effort for tiger conservation is not very old. Presently there are only six sub-species of tiger remaining in the world. All of them are endangered. The total number of individuals of all tiger species around the world is estimated to be alarmingly low, only 3200. Tigers are visible in only 7% areas of their natural home range. Among them the abundance of the Bengal Tiger is highest close to 1100 in India and Bangladesh. In the Bangladesh part Tigers are available in the Sunderbans only and their number is less than 500.
Although higher in number, the Bengal tiger is more prone to extinction because they have the highest interaction with human beings. Ecologically they occupy only one habitat, the Sunderbans. They often hunt on livestock and kill people. Many people die in the Sunderbans due to tiger attack. All of them increase the probability of their extinction. They are more vulnerable because they are surrounded by about eight million people living around the Sunderbans and troubled by three million people entering in the Sunderbans every year. There is no doubt that if these people do not cooperate there is no possibility that tigers in the Sunderbans could be saved.
Albeit, how we arrange participation does matter, the motivational part is very subjective. This is largely because the tools we use for motivation are mainly monetary incentives and NGO perceptive. NGOs in general are very active and successful in their missions; however, in practice they are multilevel profit seeking liaison between the government, people and international agencies. If there is no money, there will be no motivation, thereby, no participation can be expected. Moreover, the responsibility and liability of NGOs are minimal. At least the Wildlife Act does not have such provision. Therefore, the long term conservation of tiger may be affected seriously. Though harsh to generalize, we can say motivations are tool-dependent; thereby, motivational participation needs some additional planning for long term solution.
In our country situation of long term perspective is even bleak, because, NGO involvement is essential tool for any kind of participation. On the other hand, the traditionalism that the forestry people carry from their British ancestors till now generates mistrust. We do not know how many ages they will take to achieve the trust of people. Neither have we known whether tigers will live that long. The least we can say, to save tigers professional people have to be trustable to the general people the sooner the better otherwise many things will be relocated somewhere else including their professionalism. Vis a vis we request the nation to imagine, if any other professional group (e g., Justice) loses the trust of people, as we see with forestry groups, what would be the setback before the nation could rebuild it again?
Otherwise, the operational participation of people is good. The hardworking people of our country are very much dedicated; however, seldom look at professionalism. Once motivated, our politicians do not necessitate allowing officers and professionals working in their respective areas. As a result, trained professionals cannot exhibit professionalism and eventually lose the attribute. On the other hand, people develop a peculiar skill for making their boss happy (traditionally called oiling) but not professionalism. Therefore, appropriate skills are replaced by ‘oiling’ and the professionalism gets relocated from professionals to consultants. If the consultants are from overseas, then the professionalism finds its way seven seas away from the host country.
For tiger conservation FD is much dependent on local people. However, they cannot approach local people directly. NGOs are essential intermediary. It is a pity that people do not trust them directly. Neither the politicians do. Not to blame almost everywhere the forestry professionals have been portrayed not more than burglar of public resources. I do not know how these professionals will work under the teeth of saw. Some people have reservation even to recognize them as professionals; particularly, when they have repeatedly failed to cater a policy for recruiting trained professionals. They do not see how other professionals like engineers, doctors, and agriculturists practice their recruitment. If they think that they can train people professionally after recruitment when they are supposed to practice, they are in wrong mode. It is political rather than professional. They will be losing productive times (Youthful) and public resources for training rather than producing. We hope that our tigers will be saved professionally rather than politically.
(Article originally published on The Daily Star)
The writer is faculty member Department of Environmental Science and Management, North South University.
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Asia’s tiger reserves could support more than 10,000 wild tigers – three times the current number – if they are managed as large-scale landscapes that allow for connectivity between core breeding sites, a new paper from some of the world’s leading conservation scientists finds.The study, co-authored by WWF scientists, is the first assessment of the political commitment made by all 13 tiger range countries at November’s historic tiger summit to double the tiger population across Asia by 2022.
“A Landscape-Based Conservation Strategy to Double the Wild Tiger Population” in the current issue of Conservation Letters, finds that the commitment to double tiger numbers is not only possible, but can be exceeded. However, it will take a global effort to ensure that core breeding reserves are maintained and connected via habitat corridors.
“In the midst of a crisis, it’s tempting to circle the wagons and only protect a limited number of core protected areas, but we can and should do better,” said Dr. Eric Dinerstein, Chief Scientist at WWF and a co-author of the study.
“We absolutely need to stop the bleeding, the poaching of tigers and their prey in core breeding areas, but we need to go much further and secure larger tiger landscapes before it is too late.”
Wild tiger numbers have declined from about 100,000 in the early 1900s to as few as 3,200 today due to poaching of tigers and their prey, habitat destruction and human/tiger conflict. Most of the remaining tigers are scattered in small, isolated pockets across their range in 13 Asian countries.
“Tiger conservation is the face of biodiversity conservation and competent sustainable land-use management at the landscape level,” said study co-author Dr. John Seidensticker of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
“By saving the tiger we save all the plants and animals that live under the tiger’s umbrella.”
Past examples show that an increase in tiger numbers is possible
The authors found that the 20 priority tiger conservation landscapes with the highest probability of long-term tiger survival could support more than 10,500 tigers, including about 3,400 breeding females. They also looked at historical examples to prove that a doubling or tripling is possible using large landscapes:
In the jungles of lowland Nepal, tiger numbers crashed during civil conflict from 2002 to 2006. However, tigers did not disappear because Nepal and India’s tiger reserves are linked by forest corridors, which likely allowed for replenishment from India;
In the Russian Far East tigers, almost disappeared in the 1940s but the region was re-populated by tigers moving in from northeastern China. Recently designated habitat corridors across the Sino-Russia border are helping tigers re-establish themselves in China’s Changbaishan mountains, where they had disappeared in the 1990s.
In India’s Nagarahole National Park, tiger numbers are “healthy and resilient” because the park is connected to other reserves in the region. Tigers number almost 300 in this large landscape of connected parks and reserves.
And population declines are also possible without connectivity between habitats
In contrast, the authors point to two of India’s premier tiger reserves to show how lack of connectivity can preclude tiger population recovery. Tigers disappeared from Sariska and Panna tiger reserves in 2005 and 2009 due to poaching and were not able to re-colonize because these reserves are not connected to other reserves through habitat corridors. Consequently, wild tigers had to be translocated into these reserves to attempt to re-establish populations.
Besides poaching and habitat loss, the $7.5 trillion in infrastructure projects like roads, dams and mines that will be invested in Asia over the next decade threatens tiger landscapes. A focus only on core sites and protected areas like reserves, instead of larger landscapes, could be seen by developers and politicians as a green light to move forward with harmful infrastructure projects outside of core sites.
“Without strong countervailing pressures, short-term economic gains will inevitably trump protection of the critical ecosystems necessary for sustainable development,” said Keshav Varma, Program Director of the Global Tiger Initiative at the World Bank.
The authors insist that conservationists and governments must be involved in helping design infrastructure projects to mitigate their impacts on tigers both inside core sites and in current and potential forest corridors. A recently built oil depot in India’s Terai Arc, for example, severed a vital elephant and tiger corridor. Conservationists are now in litigation to remove the depot. Early intervention could have avoided this.
“Following the St. Petersburg Declaration, Nepal has committed to the goal of doubling wild tiger numbers across our country by 2022,” said Deepak Bohara, Nepal’s Minister for Forests and Soil Conservation.
“This analysis shows that it can be done, not just in Nepal, but, if done right with careful study and planning, across the entire tiger range. It is also worth noting that the tiger conservation provides carbon credits, protects water resources, and complements community development efforts. Thus, it is important to promote regional cooperation to maintain a healthy tiger corridor between different reserves.”
Via: wwf.panda.org Image credit: Dominic Harness/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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