New Delhi: The world last and largest tiger species, Bengal Tiger, might not be able to survive the climate change, claimed a report of United Nations published on Monday. Climate change and increasing water level due to global warming may tend to wipe the entire Bengal Tigers.
According to the report, the cats are among 500,000 land species whose survival is in question because of threats to their natural habitats.
The Sundarbans, 10,000 square kilometres of marshy land in Bangladesh and India, hosts the world largest mangrove forest and a rich ecosystem supporting several hundred animal species, including the Bengal tiger.
But 70% of the land is just a few feet above sea-level. Changes created by a warming planet will be “enough to decimate” the few hundred Bengal tigers remaining there, the report said.
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The report also said, “By 2070 there will be no suitable tiger habitats remaining in the Bangladesh Sundarbans.”
In 2010, the World Wide Fund for Nature depicted that a sea level rise of 11 inches could reduce the number of tigers in the Sundarbans by 96% within a few decades.
Lead author of the new report on the Sundarbans, Sharif A Mukul and his colleagues looked for danger to the tiger beyond sea level rise, which accounted for 5.4%to 11.3% of the projected habitat loss in 2050 and 2070.
Since the early 1900s, habitat loss, hunting and the illegal trade of animal parts have devastated the global population of tigers from around 100,000 to fewer than 4,000.