Burning bright in Tiger country: Conservation vs threat to humans

There are at least 30 widows in Bijoynagar whose husbands were killed by tigers


Sindhubala Mandal's husband was at the end of a hazardous two-week trip collecting honey in the nearby forest. Knee deep in mud, his group of six honey hunters made their way down the treacherous jungle path in silence. Suddenly a tiger leapt out of nowhere and caught him by the neck.

On that fateful April day, waiting for her husband's return, Mandal sat down to pray at the village shrine of Bonbibi, the forest goddess who is worshiped for the safety of the men who enter the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home to the largest number of Indian tigers.

"As I offered petals, the goddess' crown fell down. That was a bad omen. I knew something was wrong," whispered Mandal, 55, now a widow in white. The tiger killed three of the six men that day. "It is my fate, like so many other widows in this village," she sighed, sitting outside her mud hut. There are at least 30 widows in Bijoynagar whose husbands were killed by tigers during their frequent forays into the forest to collect honey or fish. Forest rangers claim that almost all of the 35 villages that flank the swamp sanctuary, the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, have women who have come to be called the "tiger widows".

For hundreds of years, fishermen and honey and wood collectors from these villages have depended on the resources of the Sundarbans, the last great estuarine wetland that straddles the border between India and Bangladesh. And the ever-present danger of tiger attacks has always been an occupational hazard for them.

So, when India made the forest a tiger reserve in 1973, villagers displayed little patience for conservationists and forest rangers who barred their entry into the forests in the name of saving the tigers.

"The people were so hostile that (forest rangers) could not even enter their villages," said Pradeep Vyas, director of the Sundarbans Tiger Park, home to about 245 tigers. Until the mid-1990s, tigers killed about 30 to 40 people annually – a number that fell to 15 last year as Vyas and his officers tried to keep the men busy in the villages with agriculture and cash crops.

"We couldn't stop them from entering the tiger park. And our biggest problem was that they killed every tiger that strayed into their villages," Vyas said. "How could we protect the tigers?"

In this country of a billion people, almost all national parks and wildlife sanctuaries are dogged by competing demands over forest resources. Millions of people live in and around the protected areas, and ecologists say that their continued dependence on shrinking wildlife habitats is one of the most alarming threats to India's tiger conservation goals. Home to more than half of the world's 5,000 wild tigers, India has struggled to balance environmental protection and human welfare as its sanctuaries and parks became the venue of bitter battles between rangers and villagers who refused to be plucked out of their traditional homelands or insisted on grazing rights for their cattle.

"India's wildlife protection law and the model of conservation are heavily influenced by the American national park model – one of exclusion and keeping people out.

It's completely inappropriate for a country like India," said Ashish Kothari, an ecologist who advocates involving local communities in managing protected forests.

A recent survey of Indian parks and sanctuaries by the Indian Institute of Public Administration has established that the pockets of deepest poverty in the country are among people who live in and around protected forest areas - often the only remaining source of fuel and fodder. Wildlife experts say it is imperative to wean them away from wildlife habitats with opportunities for an alternative livelihood.

Nowhere is it more crucial than in the Sundarbans, a fragile sanctuary that is a curious maze of creeks, streams, rivers and mangroves surrounded by 400,000 villagers. Part of the world's largest delta and biologically diverse, the Sundarbans plays a critical part in protecting the city of Calcutta from the frequent gales coming off the Bay of Bengal.

The Sundarbans' tigers are frequent swimmers in the saline waterways and are the subject of numerous myths and legends.

©Los Angeles Times-Washington Post