Rare species of Sundarbans

Subject – Environment

Context – rare species of Sundarbans are threatened by human activities

Concept –

Our world recently completed the ‘United Nations Decade on Biodiversity (2011-2020)’.
Small patches of mangroves are being lost gradually and quietly due to their indiscriminate destruction for either coastal development or short-term gains
Coastal mangrove habitats across the world are the preferred hub of coastal fisheries, aquaculture, pisciculture, shrimp farming, crab farming, all providing livelihoods to local people.
In Indian Sundarbans, conversion of shoreline mangroves to shrimp farms and other pisciculture farms is very popular and it is the main source of income for the local people.
Extensive surveys for the last few years (2014-2021) by our group observed that loss of these mangrove habitats also leads to loss of species that belong to IUCN’s near-threatened or endangered category.
These settlement mangroves used to be safe havens of diverse molluscs and crustaceans, but these are also disappearing due to the polluted discharges from shrimp ponds, harming the native habitat and breeding activities of these species. One such crustacean is a sesarmid mangrove tree-climbing crab called Episesarma mederi, rarely reported from Sundarban settlement mangroves.
The accreting mudflat is a favoured habitat for mangrove-dependent fish species, which enter the mudflat with the tidal flow but are trapped in these nets during the ebb current of the tides.

To know more about Sunderbans, please click here.