The Bengal tiger, or Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), is a tiger subspecies native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan, and has been classified as endangered by IUCN as the population is estimated at fewer than 2,500 individuals with a decreasing trend. None of the Tiger Conservation Landscapes within the Bengal's tiger range are large enough to support an effective population size of 250.
The Bengal tiger is the most numerous of the tiger subspecies — with populations estimated at 1,706 in India, 200 in Bangladesh, 155 in Nepal and 67–81 in Bhutan.
The Bengal tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh. Panthera tigris is the national animal of India.
The Royal Bengal Tigers, one of the world's largest big cat populations,could disappear by the end of this century as rising sea levels caused by climate change destroy their habitat along the Sundarbans coast, according to a new WWF-led study published in the journal Climatic Change.
Tigers are among the world's most threatened species, with only an estimated 3,200 remaining in the world, including over 400 in Bangladesh and India, said officials of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF).
"It's disheartening to imagine that the Sundarbans - which means 'beautiful forest' in Bangla - could be gone this century, along with its tigers," said Colby Loucks, WWF-US deputy director of conservation science and the lead author of the study 'Sea Level Rise and Tigers: Predicted Impacts to Bangladesh's Sundarbans Mangroves'.
"If we don't take steps to address the impacts of climate change on the Sundarbans, the only way its tigers will survive this century is with scuba gear," he added.
The projected sea level rise in the Sundarbans is likely to outpace the tiger's ability to adapt, says the WWF, a UK-based wildlife conservation agency.
Unless immediate action is taken, the Sundarbans, its wildlife and the natural resources that sustain millions of people may disappear within 50 to 90 years, the study states.
The mangrove forest of the Royal Bengal Tiger now joins the sea-ice of the polar bear as one of the habitats most immediately threatened as global temperatures rise during the course of this century, said Keya Chatterjee, acting director of the WWF-US climate change programme.
The Sundarbans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared by India and Bangladesh at the mouth of the Ganges River, is the world's largest single block of mangrove forest.
Providing the habitat for between 250 and 400 tigers, the Sundarbans is also home to more than 50 reptile species, 120 commercial fish species, 300 bird species and 45 mammal species.
While their exact numbers are unclear, the tigers living in the Sundarbans of India and Bangladesh may represent as many as 10 percent of all the remaining wild tigers worldwide.
Using the rates of sea level rise projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its Fourth Assessment Report (2007), the study's authors wrote that a 28 cm sea level rise may be realised around 2070, at which point tigers will be unlikely to survive in the Sundarbans.
However, recent research suggests that the seas may rise even more swiftly than what was predicted in the 2007 IPCC assessment.
In addition to climate change, the Sundarbans tigers, like other tiger populations around the world already face tremendous threats from poaching and habitat loss. Tiger ranges have decreased by 40 percent over the past decade, and tigers today occupy less than seven percent of their original range.
Scientists fear that accelerating deforestation and rampant poaching could push some tiger populations to the same fate as their now-extinct Javan and Balinese relatives in other parts of Asia.
Tigers are poached for their highly prized skins and body parts, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
The 2010 Year of the Tiger will mark an important year for conservation efforts to save wild tigers, with WWF continuing to play a vital role in implementing bold new strategies to save this magnificent Asian big cat.
The study also recommended that the government and natural resource managers should take immediate steps to conserve and expand mangroves while preventing poaching and retaliatory killing of tigers
Bangladesh is setting up a special force to save the critically endangered Royal Bengal Tiger and other animals.
The 300-member force will be deployed mostly around the Sundarbans mangrove forests, one of the last refuges of the tigers. The decision came months after they seized three tiger skins and a large quantity of bones, the biggest haul of illegal tiger parts in decades.
The Sundarbans forests stretch between Bangladesh and India.
Around 400 tigers still live in the area.
Until now poaching has not been considered as the chief threat to the tiger population in Bangladesh.
But the arrest of a poacher with tiger skins and bones earlier this year raised fears that an organised poaching group was operating in the mangrove forests.
Officials admitted they did not have enough manpower, resources and training to counter the poachers, who they said were using increasingly sophisticated techniques to trap the tigers.
Minister of Environment and Forests Hasan Mahmud said that the setting up of the new wildlife force was long overdue.
"The forest department staff in Bangladesh need more training, because now the poachers are very sophisticated," he said.
"Their sophistication has been increased but the sophistication of the forest department has not been increased over the last couple of years. So, we have to train them and we have to equip them."
Most of the money to set up the new Wildlife Crime Control unit will come from the World Bank loan of $36m (£21.8m).
The new force will also tackle a growing trade in the illegal trafficking of wild animals.
Recently, officials seized a number of protected wild animals from people who were keeping them illegally.
Earlier this month, customs officers at Bangkok airport in Thailand found hundreds of freshwater turtles and crocodiles packed in suitcases on a flight from Bangladesh.>>source bbc,Wikipedia
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