Bangladesh minister says Royal Bengal Tigers are back from India tour

Environment and Forests Minister Anwar Hossain Manju has said the Royal Bengal Tigers of the Sundarbans are back from their foreign tour.

In 2015, the minister, while speaking at an International Tiger Conservation Day meet, had said the depleting number of the tigers on the Bangladesh side of the mangrove forest was due to the decision of the tigers to go for tours to its Indian side.

On Wednesday when a journalist reminded him of his 2015 speech, where he had made light of government statistics on decreasing number of tigers in the country, the minister said gleefully, "Yes, they have come back, and they are also giving birth to cubs after the tour."

The falling tiger population had drawn the attention of none less than Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina herself who had called on world leaders to save the animal last year.

Using the camera trapping mechanism, Bangladesh and Indian experts have said the number of tigers on the Bangladesh side of the Sundarbans is down to an abysmal 105 at present.

The good-humoured comments aside, the minister failed to provide any data on the number of tigers.

There were 350 Royal Bengal Tigers in 1975. Their number went up to 450 in 2009.

A 1300 MW Bangladesh-India thermal power project at Bagherhaat in Rampal near the abode of the country's national animal is going to be set up.

Although the project is opposed by environmentalists, the government maintains that the ecological fallout of the project would be minimum.