Tiger Of Sundarban
Leda Billock
Tiger attacks in the Sundarbans, in India and Bangladesh are estimated to kill from 0-50 (mean of 22.7 between 1947 and 1983) people per year.[1] The Sundarbans is home to over 100 [2] Bengal tigers,[3] one of the largest single populations of tigers in one area. Before modern times, Sundarbans tigers were said to "regularly kill fifty or sixty people a year".[4]
These tigers are slightly smaller and slimmer than those elsewhere in India but remain extremely powerful and are infamous for destroying small wooden boats. They are not the only tigers who live close to humans; in Bandhavgarh, villages encircle the tiger reserves, and yet attacks on people are rare. Although attacks were stalled temporarily in 2004 with new precautions, they have been on the rise. This is particularly due to the devastation on the Bangladeshi side of the swamp caused by Cyclone Sidr which has deprived tigers of traditional food sources (due to the natural upheaval) and has pushed them over towards the more populated Indian side of the swamp.[5]
The locals and government officials take certain precautions to prevent attacks. Local Hindu fishermen will say prayers and perform rituals to the forest goddess Bonbibi before setting out on expeditions. Invocations to the tiger god Dakshin Ray are also considered a necessity by the local populace for safe passage throughout the Sundarbans area. Fishermen and bushmen originally created masks made to look like faces to wear on the back of their heads because tigers always attack from behind. This worked for a short time, but the tigers quickly caught on to the ruse, and the attacks reportedly continued. One local honey gatherer, Surendra Jana, 57, summarised the general feeling of the tigers adapting to their efforts: "Before we could understand the way they attacked...We don't feel safe any more, knowing our brothers have been attacked in spite of the tricks we use."[6] Government officials wear stiff pads that rise up the back of the neck, similar to the pads of an American football player. This is to prevent the tigers from biting into the spine, which is their favoured attack method.[7]
About 5,000 people frequent the swamps and waterways of the Sundarbans. Fishing boats traverse the area and many stop to collect firewood, honey and other items. In the dark forest, tigers find it easy to stalk and attack men absorbed in their work. Even fishermen in small boats have been attacked due to tigers' strong swimming abilities.[8]
Local villagers, who fear tiger attacks and resent the animal for killing their livestock, sometimes engage in revenge killings. On one occasion, a tiger had attacked and wounded the people in a village in south-west Bangladesh (near the Sundarbans) and frequently preyed upon their livestock. This roused the wrath of the villagers, and the feline became a target for their retribution. Poachers are also responsible for killing tigers in the reserve in an effort to sell them on the black market.[9]
The human death rate has dropped significantly due to better management techniques and fewer people are killed each year. Even at the rate of fifty or sixty kills per year, humans would provide only about three percent of the yearly food requirements for the tiger population of the Sundarbans. Thus, humans are only a supplement to the tiger's diet; they do not provide a primary food source.[10] This does not mean that the notoriety associated with this area is unfounded. Even if only 3% of a tiger's diet is human meat, that still amounts to the tiger killing and eating about one person per year, given the amount of food a tiger typically eats.[11]
Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris) are the most numerous of the six tiger subspecies, accounting for about half the world's population of wild tigers. Despite their status as an icon of India and Bangladesh, Bengal tigers are an endangered species. The largest population of Bengal tigers lives in Sundarbans National Park, in West Bengal, India. The national park covers about 1,330 square kilometers (328,680 acres) of the densely forested delta of the Ganges River.
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This concern was particularly stark when considering the success stories of India and Nepal, where their close tiger cousins had managed to thrive and increase their populations. The decline in Bengal tigers in the Sundarbans cast a shadow of uncertainty over their future. However, a series of dedicated efforts spearheaded by the Bangladesh government and various stakeholders have yielded encouraging results, rekindling hope for the survival and growth of these magnificent creatures.
Firstly, the surveys have observed an encouraging increase in the population of prey animals such as spotted deer, wild boars and monkeys within the Sundarbans. This bountiful prey availability signals a positive turn for the tigers, ensuring they have a steady food supply to sustain themselves and their potential offspring.
In 2010, the International Tiger Conservation Forum held a summit in Russia in which tiger range countries committed to double the global tiger population by 2022; Bangladesh was among the 13 countries. The countries at the summit decided to conduct surveys every four years.
The German biologist Hubert Hendrichs suggested that their ferocity might be linked to the saline water they drink. In 1971 he carried out a three-month study on the Bangladeshi side of Sundarbans. He compared the relative salinity of the water with the locations of known tiger attacks. His data correlated the most frequent attack sites with areas having the saltiest water.
An adult male wild boar or a chital doe might weigh a bit over a hundred pounds, and in taking it the tiger faces grave risks. To attack a big animal is not easy when you kill with your open mouth. A fighting boar slashes with sharp tusks, a struggling chital thrashes with antlers and hooves. The average adult male human in Sundarbans might weigh 130 pounds. Relatively large, slow-moving, clumsy, and, without guns virtually harmless, people are easy and abundant prey.
But this is only one of the mysteries, for tigers are very difficult animals to study. They are secretive, and often difficult to find, even a glimpse. In his long career photographing Indian wildlife, the great naturalist EP Gee never got a shot of a wild tiger.
Tigers live by stealth. Because they are stalk-and-ambush hunters, it is extraordinarily difficult to see one make a natural kill; you must be as stealthy as a tiger to avoid scaring away the prey, and you must be warier than the prey to see the tiger.
He learned to recognise eleven individual adult tigers on sight, and he spent 119 hours watching them. He examined their kills and analyzed their droppings. He listened to their voices. The book presenting his results, The Deer and the Tiger, remains a landmark.
Tigers and humans have always managed an uneasy coexistence in the Sundarbans, but the overlap has intensified in recent years. In the early hours of Jan. 12 this year, two tigers crossed the Bhola River and roamed across part of the village of Sonatala in the municipality of Bagerhat.
In that instance, the tigers returned to the forest without any incident. In many other cases, however, panicked villagers attack and kill the tigers in their midst. For the tigers, the villages with their captive livestock make for easy hunting grounds, and they frequently swim across rivers to get to these settlements, often at night.
According to the Forest Department, tigers in the Sundarbans have entered human settlements more than 50 times in the past 15 years, with casualties on both sides during these incidents. Forest Department data show that 49 tigers died in the Sundarbans between 2001 and 2021.
Doing the same in Bangladesh should prevent tigers entering villages here while at the same time prevent people from entering the forest, thereby minimizing the potential for human-tiger conflict, according to Ishtiaq Uddin Ahmad, former chief conservator of forest and the former country representative for the IUCN, the global wildlife conservation authority.
M. Monirul H. Khan, a professor of zoology at Jahangirnagar University in Dhaka and co-author of the Bangladesh Tiger Action Plan, also welcomed the fencing plan as an effective means to address the problem.
The attack left his face scarred for years and his right arm disabled. As Rexona talks about the attack during a lunch of rice and cauliflower vegetable curry, Sheikh becomes tense and distances himself from the conversation. He eats his lunch, his gaze fixed on the plate. Rexona recalls how a fellow fisherman swam for over 2 hours to tell the family about the attack, while the other men stayed with Mohammad, wondering if he would live beyond a few minutes.
Rexona recounts how his nose was hanging after the attack and that his head needed 36 stitches during his two-week hospital stay. Years have passed, and the scars have faded. But the attack has left him physically limited and emotionally altered.
They also share the forest with at least span>114 tigers, a fact that led the government to preserve more than half the area for conservation of tigers and other wildlife. The government ban on extracting forest resources in the area forced people to find other ways to earn a living.
Though Rexona had her husband treated for his physical injuries, they could not afford care for the emotional trauma. Funds in the household are lean because returning to the forest to earn for an income is no longer an option.
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