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The Sundarban Tiger
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from the report "the range of prey size of royal bengal tiger of sunderbans".
 *This image is copyright of its original author
Susmita Datta
Where the tiger is the king & the men are the trespasser.... Swamp tiger making a rare appearance in the open & giving the look to make it's point clear . Shot on a overcast day at Sundarban in Aug'18..  *This image is copyright of its original author
 *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
 (01-07-2018, 10:03 AM)Greatearth Wrote: The Bangladesh side is pretty neglected though... Indian Sunderbans roars past Bangladesh in tiger density count Krishnendu Mukherjee | Updated: Apr 9, 2018  *This image is copyright of its original author KOLKATA: The Bangladesh Sunderbans, by virtue of its larger area, has few more tigers compared with the Indian side, but the scientists, after collating findings at the mangrove forests of both countries, have said that the Indian Sunderbans has 4 tigers per 100sq km, almost twice that of the Bangladesh side. The findings, they said, point to better management in the Indian Sunderbans.  *This image is copyright of its original author “The Bangladesh Sunderbans has a bigger area and the tiger-occupied habitat, too, is higher on that side, but the density is just 2.17 tigers per 100sq km, almost half of that in the Indian Sunderbans,” said Y V Jhala, senior scientist, Wildlife Institute of India.Interestingly, the tiger-occupied area of the Bangladeshi side is also larger: 4,832sq km, compared with India’s 1,841sq km, according to a recent report on Indo-Bangla tiger estimation. So, why the lower density on the Bangladeshi side? “The reason is poaching, mainly of prey animals,” Jhala said. “The encounter rate of human sign and sighting was higher in Bangladesh Sunderbans which is further exacerbated by the usage of river channels for transportation of commercial vehicles,” says the report ‘Status of Tigers in the Sunderbans Landscape of Bangladesh and India'. Since the tiger-occupied area is higher on the Bangladeshi side, that part of the forest has more tigers despite a lower density. “But I believe the tiger population in the Bangladeshi Sunderbans is much below the actual carrying capacity, while the Indian side has reached carrying capacity,” Jhala added. The exercise, conducted in the last few years, has recorded the highest tiger density in the Sajnekhali range of the Indian Sunderbans; the lowest was recorded in Bangladesh’s Khulna range. The second phase of camera-trap exercise in the Sunderbans will begin on November 17
Footage taken by Forest department personnel while patrolling on 5th September 2013 at forests of Jinghakhali, Bashirhat Range, India.
A male tiger approaches his mate & cub out in the clearing near a sweet water pond, stayed together till dusk. Such interaction filmed for first time in Sundarbans...
Dhiman Choudhury
Nantu (one of the biggest male tiger of Mangroves) crossing a muddy canal Sunderban, Nov'18  *This image is copyright of its original author
 *This image is copyright of its original author Why do tigers in the Sundarban delta attack humans more often than tigers that live in other areas? Rishi Chatterjee, IFoS Aspirant, Moderator at Wildfact.com  *This image is copyright of its original author Because media needs juicy stories & Sundarban's reputation can be cashed in on. Hell, even eminent nature television channels (i'm looking at you NatGeo) makes shows, with footage of tigers clearly from elsewhere, narrated as if telling a ghost story. They don't, not on the Indian side atleast (Yellow line is the route i travelled by last December).  *This image is copyright of its original author That's a baseless misconception based on past, back when thousands of men used to enter the forests every year, get off their boats & walk through the dense thickets in search of trees to chop or honeycombs & for fishing. With so many people in such a prime tiger habitat, killings were bound to happen, just like tigers in fringe forests with more cattle than wild prey live mostly by cattle lifting. Because of simple availability of easier meal! Also, there are no human habitations inside Sundarban. Tigers elsewhere have seen villages & know that human are foreign elements, avoiding them whenever possible. Tigers deep inside the mangroves should find no reason to differentiate between people & deers roaming inside the forest. On the Indian side almost 80-90% of local forest dependant community who used to venture into Sundarban Tiger Reserve have now shifted to other occupations, with help of Forest Department's alternative livelihood programme & only a few fishermen now enter but aren't allowed to go deep inside. Following that, in Sundarban the number of attacks have steadily reduced & although few fishermen still get attacked from time to time it's mostly in the western fringes. Whatever conflict still exists, it's nothing like in the last century. Human deaths have fallen from sometimes as high as 50+ per year once to 2-4 now, zero in some years!  *This image is copyright of its original author Today, any tigers straying into the villages are quickly rescued & released back. Even that is rare now-a-days. Earlier tigers used to regularly enter villages to lift cattle & raise newborn cubs in paddy fields (safer place to give birth than the forest). Now the forest border is fenced with nylon net, which for some reason effectively deter tigers from crossing fencing over despite being frail.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author With lessening of constant human presence inside the forest, the tigers of Sundarban have been slowly getting less shy. They are growing more comfortable to let themselves be seen & combined their with increasing numbers, sightings have dramatically increased lately. And guess what… like every other Indian safari, no one has ever been hurt! Nor will anyone be, as long as protocols are followed. So much for their habit on swimming to boats & taking people (no kidding, they actually did that, back when they thought humans were prey).  *This image is copyright of its original author In reality, most tiger attacks in today's India take place either near Pilibhit-Dudhwa region of UP & around Tadoba buffers in Chandrapur of Maharashtra, both cases where large human populations live in close proximity of tigers at fragmented forest patches. PS: I'm not well informed about conditions on the Bangladesh side though. Most of it is still not protected area (yellow border) & people do enter the forest regularly.  *This image is copyright of its original author
Tiger (tigress?) sighted on sandbanks of Vidyadhari river by Arunava Pramanick after waiting eight years.
Looks old and/or malnourished...  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author @Pckts the owner commented, it was of "minimum 12 ft lenth r 4 ft hight"  but i'm thinking 7½' & 3½' respectively.
Exellent info, Rishi. Keep at it. The Sunderbans is an interesting region in more than one respect.
Ananya Dutta Panda
Mangroves....emotions....n queen of swamp.....  *This image is copyright of its original author
Sundarban male pugmark, Bangladesh.
©Mustuque Ahmed Munim  *This image is copyright of its original author
Tigers sighted in new pockets
Findings suggest rise in Sunderbans big cat count By Debraj Mitra in Calcutta
A tiger captured by a hidden camera in the Sunderbans.  *This image is copyright of its original author Over 400 pairs of cameras across western Sunderbans of South 24-Parganas have captured tiger images in areas that have not had any previous sighting of the big cat, suggesting a rise in the animal count. The cameras were installed at strategic points of the western part of the national park and the Sajnekhali Range in the Sunderban Tiger Reserve and the reserve forests of Matla, Raidighi and Ramganga ranges in the South 24-Parganas division from November 14. The last set of the cameras, was retrieved on December 27. It was part of the second round (post-monsoon phase) of tiger census in the mangroves. The pre-monsoon phase involved 300 pairs of eyes covering the eastern part of the national park and the Basirhat Range. “Tigers have been captured in more than 240 grids so far. The images of the three ranges in South 24-Parganas have not been checked yet,” said Nilanjan Mallick, the field director of the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve and nodal officer for the tiger count in the Sunderbans. The tiger reserve is divided into grids of 2km² each. The increase in the number of the images captured from a range does not mean the tiger population has gone up there. A tiger could have been clicked multiple times. Another might not have been clicked at all. “These are raw findings that will be scrutinised,” said Mallick. But officials in Bengal are hopeful of a rise in the number because of the images from new areas. “Some of the areas in the national park and the Sajnekhali Range have recorded tiger sightings for the first time,” said Mallick. Sunderban forest's administrative map.  *This image is copyright of its original author The 2014 tiger census had averaged the number of tigers in the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve at 74. According to the 2016-17 count — there is an annual individual count at all the reserves in the country — the number has gone up to 87. The post-monsoon pictures have already been shared with scientists of the Wildlife Institute of India and officials of the National Tiger Conservation Authority. Along with the tiger pictures, images of deer, wild boars and other animals will also be analysed by researchers. “The study of the herbivore prey base is important to find the number of tigers in an area,” said a forest department official. The researchers are going to feed the images to a software that can identify a tiger from its stripes. “The stripes in each tiger are unique, much like fingerprint of humans,” said Y.V. Jhala, senior biologist at the Dehradun-based WII. The cameras are placed in pairs because a tiger needs to be clicked from both flanks at the same time for a picture to be fit for analysis. The Cuddeback all-weather night-vision digital cameras have motion detectors. Animal movements activate the sensors in the cameras. “The exercise will also use statistical models that account for tigers that have not been photographed,” said Jhala. The report should be ready by May, he added. The Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, one of the first nine that came into being following the launch of Project Tiger in 1973, is spread across 2,500sq km. It comprises the Sunderbans National Park, marked as the core area, and the Sajnekhali Wildlife Sanctuary and the Basirhat Range, which form the buffer zones. Cameras were also placed across the tiger zones in South 24-Parganas, which are outside the geographical boundary of the reserve & falls within reserve forest area.
King Nantu starred in episode 2 of BBC Documentary series Big Cats representing the swamp tigers. Filmed in 2017 by Kalyan Varna with the assistance of Soumyajit Nandy's specialist travel agency GoingWild. (video)
This following one is the tiger who got his hind leg chopped off by a salty or kamot in 2008-9. He was treated & shifted to Khayerbari Rescue Centre, North Bengal. Now called Raja, still gorgeous. 
Climate Change could wipe out Sundarban tigers over next 50 years
Sundarbans - the iconic Bengal tiger's coastal stronghold and world’s biggest mangrove forest - could be gone due climate change and rising sea levels in 50 years. Change detection analyses indicating areas of land loss and land gain between 1968 and 2014 based on Corona and Landsat data  *This image is copyright of its original author The researchers used computer simulations to assess the future suitability of the low-lying Sundarban region for tigers and their prey species, using mainstream estimates of climatic trends from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Their analyses included factors such as extreme weather events and sea-level rise. The analyses suggest tiger habitats in the Sundarbans may vanish entirely by 2070. However, there is still hope. The more of the Sundarbans that can be conserved the more resilient it will be to future climatic extremes and rising sea levels. Only mangroves cover can increase siltation by the rivers, adding height & area to the submerging islands. Extra read: A study on effects of climate change on Sunderban southern islands of Indian side |
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