West Bengal is part of sundarbans, the largest mangrove forest in the world. In the past two years, the climate and the double blow have caused the residents of mangroves to lose their agricultural harvest and work income at the same time, and they have to increase the number of fishing trips to mangroves, so they have become the prey of Bengal tigers, who are also mangrove aborigines, more and more frequently.
Surprised by the news that "there will be tigers in 2022", I decided to ask Shaheen, a young Bangladeshi who has participated in a group visit on climate issues and a former world friend. He is also from sundarbans, and his hometown is on the edge of mangroves.
Unexpectedly, for "did anyone you know get eaten by a tiger?" Shaheen gave me a positive answer to this shocking question without hesitation. He even seemed a little too calm-he said there were "too many" things around him. I guess the second part he didn't say is yes, so it's not surprising.
According to Shaheen and other Bangladeshi researchers, the following is a story about mangroves in Bangladesh.
Mangroves and tigers in the forest
Mangroves in sundarbans span Bangladesh, with a total area of over 10000 km, of which about 60% are located in Bangladesh. Although it was strongly influenced by economy and deforestation in the last century, it is still the largest mangrove forest in the world, in which a special branch of Bengal tiger lives: mangrove forest grows in the intertidal zone of the estuary, and a large number of its areas are underwater, and it is also facing continuous tidal erosion. Compared with other species in the jungles of South Asia and Southeast Asia, Bengal tigers here are smaller, have higher population density and are more accustomed to moving in water. In some materials, they are called "sundarbans Tigers", which is the only known group of tigers living in mangroves in the world. (Note 1)
However, mangroves are not just home to wild animals. Since the end of18th century, people began to migrate to mangroves. The total population of mangrove areas in sundarbans has exceeded 7.2 million, and it is still one of the fastest growing areas.
With the continuous migration and reproduction of human beings, tigers in sundarbans have been called "man-eating tigers" since their own literature records. Some scholars believe that from now on, 50-60 people here will become the prey of tigers every year. No one knows exactly why the tiger in the mangrove forest is so aggressive-it is also the only tiger known in the world that will actively hunt humans. This may be related to the special environment of mangroves and the inability of tigers to mark their territory by normal means, but it may also be just a natural link in the food chain. In recent years, some studies believe that human food accounts for about 3% of its total food.
The release time/network of a rescued tiger in sundarbans.
Sundarbans, rich in natural resources and vast in space, is still an irreplaceable economy for human beings. Today, there are still a large number of poor farmers in the local area who rely on mangroves for their basic livelihood-in addition to the limited cultivated land at home, mangroves also provide building materials and living fuel. In addition, logging, fishing and honey cutting in mangroves in exchange for meager income are rare opportunities for them to make money. Sundarbans has been playing a key role in the macro-economy of the two countries for more than half a century before the outbreak of the epidemic. Timber, fishing, hunting, agriculture and even tourism in the surrounding areas are based on huge mangroves. Facing the enormous economic pressure, the mangrove area in sundarbans has decreased from 1970 to 20 10, a decrease of nearly 50%.
The third problem is the ocean: due to the changes in water consumption, hydraulic engineering and topographic conditions in the upper reaches of the Ganges River, the amount of fresh water injected into the delta area on the Bangladesh side has decreased significantly in recent years. Global warming has led to faster and faster sea level rise, more and more seawater intrusion, and the problem of mangrove salinization has become increasingly serious. The decline of land fertility and yield has aggravated the livelihood pressure of farmers on the side of human activities, changed the vegetation and landform on the side of animal activities, and further affected the animal population and ecological cycle-the flapping seawater is still forcing people and tigers to overlap more and more.
A man who died in the jaws of death
Although in recent decades, with the advancement of modernization and the strengthening of protection measures, the number of people who died of tiger kissing has obviously decreased compared with that of a century or two ago, the problem still exists: according to incomplete statistics, from 1970 to 2022, nearly 4,000 people in West Bengal died of tigers, of which 52 died in 20 10-2022 alone.
In contrast, Bangladesh's data is more vague, but considering the more severe poverty situation and more tiger distribution, this figure is likely to be higher: an incomplete statistics also shows that the number of people who died in the tiger's mouth in five administrative units in Satkira, Bangladesh reached 365,438+03 during the period of 2000-2065,438+02.
13 Tiger T- 1 was shot +0 1 in June, 2022, and was sent to Grevada Animal Rescue Center for autopsy.
"There are many, many." Shaheen is not sure how many people have met him, but said that such things are common around him. "Some people are dead, some people have no arms or legs, and they are all my close neighbors." He said, "There are still many people who have become' tigers'."
"Tiger" is a unique term in sundarbans, which refers to the wife left by her husband after he died in the jaws of death. In February, 2022, two female researchers from Dhaka University published a study on the group of "tigers", pointing out that in Bangladesh, local people think that tigers appear because women at home will bring bad luck, and "tigers" will inevitably fall into stigma and isolation: no one will talk to them for fear of being infected with "bad luck".
At the same time, most of the jobs that can be exchanged for livelihood in traditional villages belong to men, and the dependence on mangroves is directly proportional to the poverty of families and inversely proportional to the income from agriculture. This means that the most vulnerable are landless men, who are often the only income earners in the family. The second or even third injury caused by all these factors has made the tiger a serious problem.
On the other hand, with the constant erosion of habitats, tigers that continue to be human beings in mangroves have not been better off: due to the serious lack of research, it is impossible to accurately estimate the number of tigers existing in sundarbans at present, but the statistics of the two countries add up to less than 200 at present, which is at least 60% lower than that of fifteen years ago. (Note 2)
"People need other livelihoods"
Fear arises from this. In sundarbans, the local forest goddess "Bang Bibi" fought the evil that turned into a tiger in myth, but in reality it was thought that she would enter the mangrove forest to avoid the tiger's attack. At the same time, another tiger god, Duck Xin Lei, is considered to be able to manage the tiger's behavior, so he is worshipped by everyone who enters the mangrove forest. It means that the tiger's bad luck is never far away. The residents here have not thought of other ways to avoid bad luck except to tell their anger and fear.
Sundarbans local, forest goddess "Bang Bibi"/Wikipedia.
"People have no other choice," Shaheen said. "We need other ways to make a living, but we have no choice."
In the early years, seawater intrusion, fresh water loss, soil salinization and shrimp farming have become common livelihood choices for farmers here. Shrimp seedlings have higher tolerance to salt than crops, which makes those saline areas that can not continue to cultivate have new uses. However, this new attempt was soon proved to be just to quench thirst by drinking poison: shrimp fields with higher salinity would make other cultivated land around them more salinized, and when all farmers were forced to get involved in the tide of abandoning farmland to raise shrimp, the freshwater salinity in the delta was so high that even shrimp seedlings could not survive. The newer option is to cultivate sea crabs with higher saline-alkali tolerance-but obviously, this is only the beginning of a bigger nightmare.
The problem that fresh water is not "fresh" has also threatened the basic health of mangrove residents. In recent years, chronic diseases such as hypertension have remained high in the local area, which is generally considered to be directly related to the high salt content in drinking water.
Facing the realistic economic difficulties, leaving mangroves has become the first choice. This is true in both Bangladesh and China. Most families in mangroves rely on money remitted by members who go out to work to make ends meet. According to Shaheen, before the border between the two countries, people frequently traveled to and from both sides of the border, whether for visiting relatives, traveling, doing business or working. Cross-border travel between Bangladesh and Bangladesh is also one of the cheapest routes in the world: the toll can be as low as $3.
With the increasing frequency of extreme weather and climate disasters, the ecology in mangroves has deteriorated, and sea level rise has swallowed up coastal land. Various reasons have caused more and more landless peasants, forcing more and more people to enter another life.
However, the epidemic has made this road now in jeopardy.
Disasters are superimposed on each other
In April 2022, the epidemic spread to South Asia. A year later, in April 2022, the Delta strain triggered a new outbreak. A large number of migrant workers in sundarbans are either forced to return to their hometowns or trapped at home, unable to continue their work.
Almost simultaneously, two abnormal tropical cyclones appeared: Anpa in May 2022 and Yas in May 2022.
Sundarbans/Network after Tropical Cyclone Yas
A few months later, Shaheen and his neighbors mentioned the scene of Yas's arrival, and it seems that they still have a lingering fear. According to the Bangladeshi forestry department, this tropical cyclone caused the worst flood in sundarbans 14 years, and the backward seawater invaded 53 of the 54 freshwater lakes in the mangrove forest, leaving wildlife and local residents with no water available for a time. Due to the destruction of a large number of houses and cultivated land, the already poor economic situation of local people has worsened, and mangroves have become more and more like the last livelihood.
Even now, when the storm subsides and the flood subsides, the ecological impact of the flood on mangroves is still unknown to a large extent-one of the known phenomena is that after the typhoon Siddhartha in 2007, due to the serious ecological damage on the Bangladesh side, tigers who lost their original food began to turn around and caused more casualties.
"Nothing." Looking back on the successive disasters in the past two years, Shaheen said that relatively speaking, those who came to investigate and protect mangroves and wildlife provided some limited help to the local people.
The region is also the first to be affected by climate change. While the Pacific islands Tuvalu, Fiji and Kiribati have repeatedly become climate refugees and hot spots of climate change, sundarbans, with a population of millions, is far from getting the attention it deserves.
Sinking Bangladesh
1995, someone got up angrily in the big conference room in Berlin and informed the representatives of developed countries present: "If climate change makes us uninhabitable, we will walk into your living room with our feet."
The speaker's name is Atiq Rahman, Bangladesh Center for Advanced Studies. During the ten years from 1985 to 1995, Bangladesh suffered two deadly floods and two super typhoons, and tens of millions of people were displaced. Even so, the model of global warming and climate change shows that Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to various catastrophic consequences caused by global warming because of its geographical and hydrological conditions.
IPCC Model Estimation on the Threat of Sea Level Rise in Bangladesh /IPCC
1995, everything still sounds like doomsday fantasy, sensational alarmism. Negotiations to curb global warming have been going on for several years, but no substantial progress has been made: the United States insists on the "fair" emission reduction of global simultaneous emission reduction, so it has repeatedly rejected agreements involving emission reduction.
In 2022, the climate problem began to become a serious risk that everyone at all levels in the world must face up to. It seems that the negotiations have finally improved fundamentally. However, in Bangladesh, things have slipped to a dead end step by step: the Bangladesh Delta (Ganges Delta) is being swallowed up by the ocean. In the last two decades of the 20th century, sundarbans's four islands, Bedford Island, Lohachala Island, Kabasgadi Island, Banga Island and Sopali Island, sank to the bottom of the sea, leaving more than 6,000 families homeless. In the first two decades of the 2 1 century, four of the eight villages on the ancient island of Ramallah were submerged. In recent years, as many as 400,000 migrants arrive in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to become slum members every year, most of which are related to climate disasters. Due to the unbearable population growth, Dhaka's municipal management is also facing collapse. In the village where Shaheen lives, the area of land that can be cultivated normally is decreasing every year. When climate disasters become more frequent and unpredictable, it is only a matter of time before residents here become climate refugees.
How long will it take for tigers in mangroves to become extinct? (Edit/Zhang)
Precautions:
1. Tigers in mangroves in sundarbans are obviously smaller than Bengal tigers on land, and their male weight can be as low as half of the average level of the latter. At the same time, they have been active in shallow water and swamps for a long time, and have a lot of diving and long-distance swimming records. There is a conjecture that sundarbans tiger is an independent subspecies, because it is obviously different from Bengal tiger in physical characteristics and activities, but there is still no evidence of genetic research so far.
2. This calculation method is optimistic but extremely inaccurate. Observations show that tigers in sundarbans frequently cross the Indian-Bangladeshi border. Some people think that there are only 65,438,000 tigers left in the mangrove area of sundarbans.
Return to nature and refuse commercialization.
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The small world said by @ World
The above is related to 1986, which is about the sharing of tigers. After reading 1986, I hope this will help you!