Climate Trackers: Bengal Tiger

Description: www.climatetrackers.net The Bengal tiger is a large solitary predator that needs a hunting ground of more than 100 km2. At present, the largest population of Bengal tigers live in the Sudarbans delta, a region straddling India and Bangladesh, where 100000 km2 of mangrove forests and swamps still subsist. Mangrove swamps have an essential stabilising role in coastal zones, creating a natural barrier between the coast and the extreme climatic events from the ocean, such as high tides, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Throughout the world, mangrove swamps are subject to irreversible damage due to human constructions, chemical pollution and the extensive breeding of shrimps. The climate change underway brings a supplementary destructive factor and the rise in sea levels can eliminate mangrove swamps forever as evidenced in the hundred Sudarbans islands, where four have already been swallowed up. In fact, the seas only have to rise one more metre and the largest mangrove forest in the world will disappear forever, in turn depriving the Bengal tigers of their living space. Download www.ec.europa.eu