The Sundarbans Tiger Count Is Rising Again
Bangladesh's Sundarbans tiger population has climbed from 114 in 2018, with satellite collars, anti-poaching patrols and village conflict measures behind the recovery in the world's largest mangrove forest.
By the UISC BD Editorial Desk · United Information Service Center · Published 9 September 2026 · 6-minute read
Counting tigers in a tidal mangrove forest is genuinely difficult work. The Sundarbans is a maze of channels, mudflats and dense salt-tolerant forest where researchers move by boat, place camera traps in terrain that floods twice a day, and identify individual animals by stripe pattern.
The direction of travel from that work is encouraging. Bangladesh's most widely reported government survey put the tiger population in the Bangladeshi Sundarbans at 125, up from 114 recorded in the 2018 survey. Reporting on the 2024-25 census cycle, announced by the Forest Department on World Forest Day in March 2026, has cited a considerably higher figure of 205 — a number worth treating with some caution until the full methodology is published, but which points the same way.
Either way, after decades in which the trend line pointed down, it now points up.
What Changed on the Ground
Conservationists credit a fairly unglamorous set of interventions:
- Intensified anti-poaching patrols through the forest's channels
- Fencing in vulnerable border areas to reduce accidental encounters
- Satellite radio collars, now fitted to tigers in the Sundarbans, tracking movement in something close to real time
- Conflict-reduction measures in border villages, aimed at the encounters that historically ended with a dead tiger
The last item is the one that determines whether the others hold. In every tiger range state, the binding constraint is not the animal — it is whether the people living at the forest edge have reason to tolerate a predator that occasionally kills their livestock and sometimes them. Collars that warn villages when a tiger is approaching change that calculation in a way patrols alone cannot.
What the Forest Contains
The Sundarbans is the largest mangrove forest on earth, shared between Bangladesh and India, and it holds far more than its most famous resident: roughly 330 plant species, 400 fish species, 300 bird species, 35 reptiles and 42 mammals.
It also performs a function no engineered structure matches: the mangrove belt absorbs storm surge before it reaches inland districts. Every cyclone that strikes Bangladesh's southwest coast hits the Sundarbans first. Protecting tiger habitat and protecting several million coastal residents are, in this particular case, the same activity.
The Threats Have Not Gone Away
Researchers and conservationists are consistent about what still endangers the population: infrastructure projects sited too close to the forest, rising salinity driven by climate change and upstream water diversion, increasingly frequent cyclones, and sea level rise that steadily reduces the habitat's total area.
That final threat is the one no amount of patrolling addresses. A tiger population can recover from poaching; it cannot recover from its forest going underwater. Bangladesh's tiger conservation is therefore inseparable from its climate and energy trajectory and from international decisions the country does not control.
Why a Rising Count Is Worth Reporting
Conservation reporting skews toward decline, usually with reason. It is worth marking the exceptions accurately when they occur, because they carry practical information: they show which interventions work.
What worked here was neither exotic nor expensive by infrastructure standards — patrols, fences, collars, and sustained attention to the communities at the forest boundary. In one of the most difficult habitats on earth to police, applied consistently over several years, that was enough to reverse the trend.
Related reading
- Hilsa: How Bangladesh Protects the World's Favourite Fish
- Bangladesh Tourism: $440 Million Earned, $5 Billion Available
- Bangladesh Now Has 64 Protected Geographical Indication Products
- Seventeen New Economic Zones and the Race for Investment
Sources
- "Tiger population in Bangladesh's Sundarbans reaches 125," Anadolu Agency — aa.com.tr
- "Tiger population census in Bangladesh shows a hopeful upward trend in the Sundarbans," Mongabay — news.mongabay.com
- "Back-to-back tiger sightings boost optimism in Sundarbans," The Daily Star — thedailystar.net
- "Has the tiger population increased in the Sundarbans?," The Business Standard — tbsnews.net
