Global warming leads India tigers to village attacks

Global warming leads India tigers to village attacks

From Reuters, October 20, 2008

KOLKATA (Reuters) – The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India’s Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food, experts said on Monday.

Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world’s largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers’ natural habitat.

The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq mile) area of low-lying swamps on India’s border with Bangladesh, is dotted with hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels.

“In the past six months, seven fishermen were killed in an area called Netidhopani,” Pranabes Sanyal of the World Conservation Union said.

“Owing to global warming, the fragile Sundarbans lost 28 percent of its habitat in the last 40 years. A part of it is the core tiger reserve area from where their prey migrated.”

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