Yahoo – AFP,
9 Aug 2015
Bangladesh police have shot dead six alleged tiger poachers as it launches a crackdown following a drastic fall in the number of big cats (AFP Photo/Munir Uz Zaman) |
Dhaka (AFP)
- Bangladesh police Sunday shot dead six alleged tiger poachers in the world's
largest mangrove forest as it launched a crackdown following a drastic fall in
the number of big cats.
Police said
the six died after a gunfight with a gang at a canal in the Sundarbans forest,
home to critically endangered Bengal tigers whose number there has nosedived to
106 from an estimated 440 a decade ago.
"The
poachers first fired at us as we raided their den at Mandarbaria canal in the
forest. We fired back. Six poachers were killed in the gunfight," local
police chief Harendranath Sarker told AFP.
He said
police found the skins of three adult Bengal tigers, measuring 10-11 feet (3.5
metres), and seized four rifles and a pistol.
Sarker said
the crackdown on poachers came in the wake of the forest department's recent
survey, which shows tiger numbers had declined in what was thought to be one of
the world's largest wild reserves for the rare animal.
Some 440
tigers were recorded in the Sundarbans during a census conducted in 2004 in the
World Heritage-listed forest, one of the world's last remaining habitats for
the big cats.
However
doubts were raised immediately after the census. Many wildlife experts said the
10,000 square kilometre (3,850 square mile) forest, straddling Bangladesh and
India, could not have room for more than 200 tigers.
Late last
month Tapan Kumar Dey, the government's wildlife conservationist, said analysis
of camera footage from a year-long survey that ended in April found current
tiger numbers ranged between 83 and 130, an average of 106.
Officials
blamed a decline in their prey and rising poaching.
In recent
years an elite police force has rescued live tiger cubs from poachers and
seized nearly a dozen tiger skins.
Police
chief Sarker said the Sundarbans, with its network of rivers and canals, had
become a magnet for poacher gangs.
"They
now sell tiger bones, meat and skin for a lot of money," he said, adding a
lack of law enforcement and of monitoring inside the forest had contributed to
the rise in poaching.
Bengal
tigers live mainly in India, where nationwide there are an estimated 2,226,
with smaller populations in Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar.
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