On March 12, four tigers were sighted at a tourist area on the Mongla side of the Sundarbans. A group of 30 tourists were treated to the rare experience while touring on the ML Subati launch.
Images and videos of the sightings have gone viral on social media, as the most tourists usually get to see of the elusive big cat are footprints on the riverbank.
Sohrab Hossain, one of the tourists on the launch, said: “On the way back to Khulna from the Sundarbans at around 4.30pm, we heard from another tourist launch that tigers had been seen. As a result, we were all on high alert, hoping to get lucky. Then we saw four tigers sitting together near Katka. They were playing.”
According to a tour guide of Sundarban Holidays, all the tigers were quite large, and none were cubs.
Launch master Shamim said: “I have been to the Sundarbans many times, but I had never seen a tiger. This is the first time, and to see four tigers at once is special!”
Mihir Kumar Doe, conservator of forests of the Khulna region, confirmed that four tigers had been sighted.
Multiple tiger sightings in recent months
According to locals and forest rangers, tigers have not been seen with such high frequency in the Sundarbans for the last 10 years. Other than the sightings in March, forest officials saw tigers on a visit in February and a fisherman lost his life in a tiger attack on December 20 last year.
Forest officials of a patrol team saw three tigers in the Sundarbans on February 24. Mofizur Rahman Chowdhury, fisheries specialist of the division, shared his experience in a Facebook post.
The official said tigers had also been seen a week earlier by forest rangers.
“It’s definitely good news that our tourists have witnessed the Royal Bengal Tigers. However, I don’t think it’s surprising. The Sundarbans is pasture for tigers and the forest department along with locals has created a safe place for these tigers to move around,” said DFO Mihir.
Although environmentalists are happy with the increasing number of tiger sightings, locals near the Sundarbans are growing fearful of tigers straying near human settlements.
Sightings indicate stable tiger population
In 1982, in the first ever tiger census in the country, 453 tigers were found in the Sundarbans. The tiger population decreased in the next two censuses, with 440 tigers counted in 2004 and 106 in 2013.
However, in the latest census in 2018, a total of 114 tigers were counted. Combined with the recent increase in tiger sightings, this has raised hope among environmentalists that we could be headed towards a golden age for tigers.
Md Anwarul Islam, former professor of Zoology of Dhaka University and chief executive of conservation organization WildTeam, said: “Even if the tiger population is not increasing, the high frequency of sightings suggests that it has at least become stable.”
He praised government efforts to conserve the rare big cats and said people had recently become more aware of the importance of tigers.
“There would be no Sundarbans without tigers. The visibility of tigers definitely doesn’t say much about the size of its population, but I have talked with my team on the ground and the tigers are being spotted quite frequently,” he added.
The expert also said that tigers were usually solitary animals, and the presence of a group suggested that they may have taken down a huge prey and gathered to share the meal.
The divisional forest officer told Dhaka Tribune a project had been approved to initiate another tiger census by May. On average, a census takes two years to complete.
