KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - The number of tiger attacks on people is growing in India’s Sundarban islands as habitat loss and dwindling prey caused by climate change drives them to prowl into villages for food, experts said Monday.

Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world’s largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers’ natural habitat.

The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq mile) area of low-lying swamps on India’s border with Bangladesh, is dotted with hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels.

“In the past six months, seven fishermen were killed in an area called Netidhopani,” Pranabes Sanyal of the World Conservation Union said. (more…)

Debates around the potential benefits of GM crops for developing countries must be reasoned and evidence-based, says Albert Weale.

The World Bank recently estimated that a doubling of food prices over the last three years could push 100 million people in low-income countries deeper into poverty. And the future does not look brighter. Food prices, although likely to fall from their current peaks, are predicted to remain high over the next decade.

As the world considers how to respond, the debate about genetically modified (GM) crops has inevitably reared its ugly head. ‘Ugly’ because the public exchange about this technology has usually seen extreme viewpoints gaining the most airtime. For example, in the United Kingdom, Prince Charles’ spirited but ill-informed attack on GM crops this summer led to a flurry of opinionated responses. We could have been back in the polarised debates of the earlier part of this decade. (more…)