DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh will seek emergency funds from the World Heritage Center to restore the ecosystem and biodiversity of the Sundarban mangrove forest, badly mauled by last month’s killer cyclone, officials said on Wednesday.
Cyclone Sidr, which struck the Bangladesh coast on November 15 with winds of 250 kph (155 mph), killed around 3,500 people, made millions homeless and destroyed a large part of the Sundarbans, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to the Royal Bengal Tiger.
Forest officials said they had found two dead tigers and several deer following the cyclone, the worst to hit Bangladesh since 1991, when a storm killed around 143,000 people.
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As warming temperatures push organisms to seek cooler climates at ever-higher altitudes, habitat areas are shrinking, putting many species of plants and animals at risk. This trend could have particularly dire consequences for the world’s bird populations, according to a new report in the journal Conservation Biology. “It’s like an escalator to extinction,” says lead author Cagan Sekercioglu, a senior research scientist with the Department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University. “As a species is forced upwards and its elevational range narrows, the species moves closer to extinction.”