question_answer

Direction: Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:

One of the largest mangrove forests in the world and unique tiger habitat, the Sunderbans in West Bengal I facing a serious threat to its ecosystem from poaching and felling of trees. The Sunderbans is situated at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal, in the Ganga-Brahmaputra delta, the largest in the world.

The increase in the region's population has led to the exploitation of the Sunderbans. Most people in the region are poor and depend on the forest for livelihood and, more specifically, their firewood needs. The blame does not lie with the poor local residents alone. There is a major racket being run in the Sunderbans by timber merchants, who bribe forest officers and workers and get a free hand in collecting as much timber as they wish.

The Sundari tree, a variety of mangrove from which the Sunderbans got its name, is fast vanishing from the region as it has become one of the prime targets of the timber merchants.

The Sunderbans has a mono-crop agricultural pattern, which means that the people of the region have no other sources of income. Thus, burdened by poverty, over two lakh people have turned to collecting tiger prawn seeds, using nylon nets, which are dragged along the river banks.

In the process, apart from destroying mangrove seedlings and eliminating the possibility of a regeneration of mangroves along the river banks, at least 74 species of fish are also destroyed.

The racket relating to exploitation of trees in Sunderbans mainly rests with:

A) People of the region

B) Poor local residents

C) Timber merchants

D) Forest officers

E) None of these