India,
Bangladesh To Begin World's Largest Tiger Census
Monday,
July 28, 2003
 |
Indian
and Bangladeshi wildlife officials are to carry
out the world's largest census on Bengal tigers
to study their breeding and feeding patterns and
find out why some of them become man-eaters, Associated
Press reports today.
The
$125,000 biodiversity project, partly funded by
UNESCO, will take place in the Sunderbans jungle,
which straddles the two countries and is one of
the few remaining natural habitats for tigers.
|
Tigers
kill about 50 people every year on the jungle's Indian
side, officials said. Bangladesh's official news agency,
Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, reported that tigers killed
22 people in the country last year and 24 the year before.
"Human
beings are not a natural diet for tigers," said Atanu
Raha, chief conservator of forests in West Bengal state.
"A tiger turns into a man-eater only under extraordinary
situations, like when it grows too infirm or disabled
to hunt, or when there is a scarcity of its natural prey."
Bangladeshi
wildlife officials blame tiger attacks on the destruction
of their natural habitat through poaching or illegal logging
(Nupur Banerjee, AP, July 28).
