Plans are underway to build a coal-fired plant inside the Sundarbans mangrove forest, home to tigers like this cub. Tiger Cub | Sunderban Tiger Reserve by Arindam Bhattacharya. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

There is a new threat that could inflict serious damage to the Sundarbans: a UNESCO world heritage site and the largest mangrove forest in the world (UNESCO, 2016). The Bangladeshi company The Orion Group wants to build a coal-fired plant inside this irreplaceable ecosystem.

Such an act would have far-reaching consequences. First of all, 106 Royal Bengal Tigers currently reside within the Bangladesh Sundarbans (Inskip, Carter, Riley, Roberts, & MacMillan, 2016). The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the most threatened of all big cats (Hunter, 2015), numbering only 3,890 wild individuals and occupying just 4% of their historic range (Howard, 2016; Panthera, 2015c). Damaging the Sundarbans, one of…