Today, Saturday, 29 July, is World Tiger Day. The day is observed every year on 29 July to protect tigers' natural habitat and raise public awareness of tiger conservation. It was launched at the tiger summit held in St Petersburg in 2010.

Although it is marked worldwide, the day is observed with special importance in the 13 countries where tigers survive in higher density. In Bangladesh, this year's theme is "Conserve tigers, and the Sundarbans will prosper".

At the first tiger summit in St Petersburg in 2010, 13 countries including Bangladesh set a goal of doubling tiger numbers within 12 years. Nepal has since doubled its numbers, and India and Bhutan have come close. Bangladesh's numbers have risen slightly but remain far from the target.

According to the Forest Department, a 1975 survey after independence found 350 tigers in the Sundarbans. A 1982 survey put the number at 425, and two years later, in 1984, a survey of a 110-square-kilometre area of the Sundarbans South Wildlife Sanctuary reported 430 to 450 tigers. In 1992 the Forest Department reported 359 tigers. The following year, 1993, Dhan Bahadur Tamang surveyed 350 square kilometres of the Sundarbans using the pugmark method and reported 362 tigers.

A survey in 2004 put the number at 440. The 1996–97 survey gave 350 to 400 tigers, counted then by the pugmark method. In the 2015 survey, the number in the Bangladesh part of the Sundarbans fell alarmingly to 106. The sudden drop from 400 to 106 caused an outcry around the world.

In the latest survey, in 2018, the count was 114. But in the eastern Sundarbans, the Forest Department recovered four tiger carcasses in about two and a half years, from 21 August 2019 to 28 January 2022. On 19 January 2021, RAB-8 and the Forest Department arrested a smuggler with a tiger skin. The Forest Department recovered a tiger carcass from the Satkhira range of the western Sundarbans, and RAB-6 recovered a tiger skin from the same range this year. By this reckoning, seven tigers have been lost from the count.

The Forest Department has no accurate figure for how many tigers are in the Sundarbans at the moment, because counting by camera tracking began only in January this year, after a gap of four years. The results are expected to be announced around June 2024.

To mark World Tiger Day 2023, a discussion has been organised at the Haimanti auditorium of Ban Bhaban on Saturday. Chief Conservator of Forests Md Amir Hossain Chowdhury will preside, with the ministry's Deputy Minister Habibun Nahar MP as chief guest. The ministry's secretary Dr Farhina Ahmed and additional secretary Iqbal Abdullah Harun will attend as special guests.

Teachers and experts from zoology departments of various universities will also attend.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.