Sundarbans

Context:

The report was recently published by the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI).

The report not only documents the avifauna of the Sunderbans, but also serves as a comprehensive photographic field guide, with detailed distribution and locality data for all the species from the region.

About

• Sundarbans is vast contiguous mangrove forest ecosystem in the coastal region of Bay of Bengal spread across India and Bangladesh.
• It covers approximately 10,000 square kilometres of area of which 60% is in Bangladesh and remaining in India.
• It is located in delta region of Padma, Meghna and Brahmaputra river basins.
• It is the largest tidal halophytic mangrove forest in the world.
• It was recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.
• Sundarbans forests are known for Royal Bengal Tiger and other numerous species of animals, including Chital Deer, Crocodile and Snakes.
• It is facing threat from climate change and rise in sea level.
• It also faces threat from widespread construction and clearing of mangrove forests for fisheries.

Sundarbans National Park 

Sundarbans National Park is a national park, tiger reserve, and biosphere reserve in West Bengal, India. It is part of the Sundarbans on the Ganges Delta, and adjacent to the Sundarban Reserve Forest in Bangladesh. The delta is densely covered by mangrove forests, and is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger. It is also home to a variety of bird, reptile and invertebrate species, including the salt-water crocodile. The present Sundarban National Park was declared as the core area of Sundarban Tiger Reserve in 1973 and a wildlife sanctuary in 1977. On 4 May 1984 it was declared a national park. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1987, and it has been designated as a Ramsar site since 2019.  It is considered as a World Network of Biosphere Reserve (Man and Biosphere Reserve) from 1989.

Project CAT (Conserving Acres for Tigers)

• Discovery Communications is working with World Wildlife Fund and others to support a worldwide effort to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022.
• It is a mission to ensure a future for tigers and other endangered wildlife by conserving nearly a million acres of protected land on the border of India and Bhutan.
• Tigers face multiple threats from poaching, habitat loss and fragmentation, conflict with humans and overhunting of their prey species.
• As a large predator, tigers are an umbrella species. They play a key role in maintaining a healthy ecosystem.
  • By protecting tigers and their habitat, the others risk animals that share this habitat, like Asian elephants, greater one-horned rhinos, clouded leopards and important prey species are also getting protected

Umbrella Species and Keystone Species

• Umbrella Species are species that are selected for conservation-related decisions because the conservation and protection of these species indirectly affect the conservation and protection of other species within their ecosystem.
• Umbrella species help in the selection of potential reserve locations, as well as the determination of the composition of the reserve.
• These species usually have a large area requirement for which the conservation of the species extends the protection to other species sharing the same habitat.
• Umbrella species are representative of other species in their habitat since they are known species, and they also determine the area of conservation.
  • For example: The protection of the Bay checkerspot butterfly automatically leads to the protection of the grassland while the conservation of the Amur tiger in the Russian Far East also means automatic conservation and protection of the deer and boar in their habitat.
• A keystone species is an organism that helps define an entire ecosystem. Without its keystone species, the ecosystem would be dramatically different or cease to exist altogether.
• Keystone species have low functional redundancy.
  • This means that if the species were to disappear from the ecosystem, no other species would be able to fill its ecological niche.
  • The ecosystem would be forced to radically change, allowing new and possibly invasive species to populate the habitat.
• Any organism, from plants to fungi, may be a keystone species; they are not always the largest or most abundant species in an ecosystem.

The Sundarbans Mangrove Forest

• The Sundarbans mangrove forest, one of the largest such forests in the world, lies across India and Bangladesh on the delta of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna rivers on the Bay of Bengal.
• It is adjacent to the border of India’s Sundarbans World Heritage site inscribed in 1987.
• The site is intersected by a complex network of tidal waterways, mudflats and small islands of salt-tolerant mangrove forests, and presents an excellent example of ongoing ecological processes.
• The area is known for its wide range of fauna, including 260 bird species, the Bengal tiger and other threatened species such as the estuarine crocodile and the Indian python.
  • It is home to many rare and globally threatened wildlife species such as the estuarine crocodile, Royal Bengal Tiger, Water monitor lizard, Gangetic dolphin, and olive ridley turtles.