For a country this size, Bangladesh has been endowed with an extraordinary amount of natural wealth and abundance. While its floods do cause serious calamities to its people, the waters are also the source of rich Himalayan mineral deposits and without the yearly flooding, soil that already bears a heavy agricultural load would never replenish itself.

Tigers are in the news again, but finally we’re hearing from the conservationist side of the story. As Adam Barlow writes:

I hope, for the sake of the tigers, that there will be no further unbalanced attacks the media that are at best divisive and at worse damage tiger conservation. It is much easier to criticize other people’s efforts to save the tiger than to create solutions or come to work in the forest to help save tigers.

While we debate tiger darting in the newspapers for example, more cows and dogs have been killed in Chandpai where we were trying to collar a problem tiger. The same tiger has killed over 60 domestic animals and one person. Livestock depredation by tigers is common in the eastern Sundarbans and man-eating is rampant in the West. Surely these kinds of issues deserve more attention in the newspapers.

As recorded by the BBC news regarding Sirajul’s article “According to Raghu Chundawat, a Delhi-based wildlife scientist who is not connected to the project, any long-term suspension of the radio-collar programme would be a “disaster” for the Sundarbans, and doubts about the safety of the drugs are “absolute nonsense”.” What does it achieve to attack people’s efforts to conserve tigers in the press? I think that the Forest Department’s efforts to save the Sundarbans tigers should be highly commended. The tigers’ only hope is that people can work together in a constructive way and I ask the Bangladesh people to unite behind tiger conservation before it is too late

For more info:

• See www.sundarbanstigerproject.info.
• The original offending article

Videos of the project can be viewed via you-tube

Tiger conservation — Sundarbans tiger project

Tiger conservation — The Tiger Project video part 2

Tiger conservation — The Tiger Project video part 3

Tiger conservation — The Tiger Project video part 4

Some recent controversy has arisen over the work of the Sundarbans Tiger Project, a conservation project based in the Bangladesh side of the Sundarbans.

The issue mainly stems over whether the project is doing good by learning the habits of the majestic animal, or contributing to its demise. Its opponents argue that the drug used in the tranquilizing damages the tiger’s central nervous system. Hossain writes:

Sundarban is a unique place and also the only great ecosystem in the world where Bengal tigers live in saline water system. Life of a wild tiger is extremely challenging and very much depends on the physical and psychological integrity of the animal. For zoo or captive tigers physical wellbeing is enough for her survival. But for a wild animal her physical and psychological performance together only can ensure her survival. There has not been any pharmacological research to find how the above chemicals will affect specially the Sundarban tiger that drinks salt water and eat the intestine of the kill full of mangrove vegetation. Before this research is done and proven safe, there should be no other application of those drugs on healthy tigers in the wild.

However, researchers on the project argue that there is no evidence that the drug causes said damage, and that radio-collaring is an absolutely necessary tool in discovering the habits of the tiger, so that managers can make proper decisions as to its conservation. Adam Barlow writes:

The media has great potential to help in raising awareness about tiger conservation and to garner public support for this precious animal. Conversely, it also has the power to damage tiger conservation by negative and subjective reporting that confuses issues and seemingly deliberately tries to hamper people’s heartfelt and well-thought out efforts to protect the tiger. Surely the job of the newspaper is to provide objective reports on stories so that the Bangladeshi people can use the balanced information to make informed views on a subject.

You can read more from the following links:

• Collaring for Conservation, Adam Barlow’s retort (word document, 300KB).
• Click here for the link to the full article, “Immature science in immature hands?”
• Click here for the link to the original story.

It is our opinion that collaring is necessary and needed for the proper management of the Sundarbans and its wildlife, especially for the Royal Bengal Tiger, who is the chosen mascot of Bangladesh. Without solid research to back up forest management policies, the tigers stand at great risk to human interference. Given the lack of proper management that the forest department has had in episodes previous, we feel that appropriate, international standard scientific research will help conserve one of the last remaining wild places Bangladesh has.

Here’s a video showing the process of capturing the tiger:

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