After surveying creeks and rivers in the Sundarbans for the last 15 days, the installation of 1,330 cameras is set to start today for the Bengal tiger census by using the camera trapping method.

During the survey that started on 15 December, four ranges of the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest, have been divided into 665 grids (the size of every grid is 4 sqkm) for installing cameras.

On the first day, cameras will be installed in the areas under the Kalabogi forest station of the Sundarbans West forest division as the forest department, during the survey, found footprints of the big cats in the coasts of different rivers and creeks here.

"Two cameras will be installed in every gird for capturing images of the big cats.  The cameras will remain on the spots for the next 40 days. The images captured by the cameras will be later analysed using advanced technology," said Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain, project director and the divisional forest officer (DFO) of West Sundarbans.

He said the tiger census will continue for the next three months. Later, the same survey and camera trapping will be done again in November 2023. We will be able to release the outcome by March 2024.

Abu Naser Mohsin Hossain said the forest department did tiger censuses in the Khulna, Satkhira, and Sarankhola ranges of the Sundarbans in 2015 and 2018. This time, the census is underway in all four ranges of the world's largest mangrove forest.

According to the forest department, the tiger census was expected to begin in October but was delayed amid a fund crisis due to the global recession. For the tiger census and tiger conservation, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change approved the Sundarbans Tiger Conservation Project involving Tk35.93 crore in March 2022. The three-year venture will end in March 2025.

In the middle of October, the Planning Commission disbursed Tk3.24 crore for the tiger census.

According to the forest department, there are currently 3,840 Bengal tigers in the wild in 13 countries of the world. As per the 2018 survey, the number of tigers in the Sundarbans is 114, which was 106 in 2015 and 404 in 2004.