The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

The Sunderbans, the world largest mangrove forest, home to the endangered Royal Bengal tiger, bore the brunt of a deadly cyclone that smashed into the country, killing wildlife, experts and officials said yesterday.

Cyclone Sidr hit Bangladesh's southern coast on Thursday evening before roaring through central districts killing hundreds and possibly thousands of people and devastating vast areas. "The winds have twisted the mangrove by flattening thousands of trees," said Prof Dr Ainun Nishat, Country Representative of the World Conservation Union. He said the strong tidal surge could have killed wildlife.

The internationally reputed nature expert said, "I am concerned that thousands of deers and some tigers would have been washed into the rivers by the surge and might have died." The Sunderbans is home to an estimated 500 Royal Bengal tigers. There are only an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 of the endangered species left worldwide, down from 100,000 in 1900. Besides, it is the shelters to tens of thousands deer and birds. Lying on the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta where it meets the Bay of Bengal on Bangladesh's southern coast, the Sunderbans is the world's largest mangrove forest covering some 5,800 square kilometres (3,590 square miles).

It is made up of around 200 lush forested islands, separated by a complex network of hundreds of tidal rivers and creeks. About 40 percent of the Sunderbans is in India.

Experts say the mangrove forest forms an important buffer shielding millions from the worst impact of the Bay of Bengal's many cyclonic storms and tidal waves.

Although not inhabited, the jungle is a magnet for thousands of impoverished villagers who live along its boundaries and work there as fishermen or collecting honey or wood.