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The Sundarban Tiger
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  *This image is copyright of its original author Why do tigers in the Sundarban delta attack humans more often than tigers that live in other areas? Rishi Chatterjee, IFoS Aspirant, Moderator at Wildfact.com  *This image is copyright of its original author Because media needs juicy stories & Sundarban's reputation can be cashed in on. Hell, even eminent nature television channels (i'm looking at you NatGeo) makes shows, with footage of tigers clearly from elsewhere, narrated as if telling a ghost story. They don't, not on the Indian side atleast (Yellow line is the route i travelled by last December).  *This image is copyright of its original author That's a baseless misconception based on past, back when thousands of men used to enter the forests every year, get off their boats & walk through the dense thickets in search of trees to chop or honeycombs & for fishing. With so many people in such a prime tiger habitat, killings were bound to happen, just like tigers in fringe forests with more cattle than wild prey live mostly by cattle lifting. Because of simple availability of easier meal! Also, there are no human habitations inside Sundarban. Tigers elsewhere have seen villages & know that human are foreign elements, avoiding them whenever possible. Tigers deep inside the mangroves should find no reason to differentiate between people & deers roaming inside the forest. On the Indian side almost 80-90% of local forest dependant community who used to venture into Sundarban Tiger Reserve have now shifted to other occupations, with help of Forest Department's alternative livelihood programme & only a few fishermen now enter but aren't allowed to go deep inside. Following that, in Sundarban the number of attacks have steadily reduced & although few fishermen still get attacked from time to time it's mostly in the western fringes. Whatever conflict still exists, it's nothing like in the last century. Human deaths have fallen from sometimes as high as 50+ per year once to 2-4 now, zero in some years!  *This image is copyright of its original author Today, any tigers straying into the villages are quickly rescued & released back. Even that is rare now-a-days. Earlier tigers used to regularly enter villages to lift cattle & raise newborn cubs in paddy fields (safer place to give birth than the forest). Now the forest border is fenced with nylon net, which for some reason effectively deter tigers from crossing fencing over despite being frail.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author With lessening of constant human presence inside the forest, the tigers of Sundarban have been slowly getting less shy. They are growing more comfortable to let themselves be seen & combined their with increasing numbers, sightings have dramatically increased lately. And guess what… like every other Indian safari, no one has ever been hurt! Nor will anyone be, as long as protocols are followed. So much for their habit on swimming to boats & taking people (no kidding, they actually did that, back when they thought humans were prey).  *This image is copyright of its original author In reality, most tiger attacks in today's India take place either near Pilibhit-Dudhwa region of UP & around Tadoba buffers in Chandrapur of Maharashtra, both cases where large human populations live in close proximity of tigers at fragmented forest patches. PS: I'm not well informed about conditions on the Bangladesh side though. Most of it is still not protected area (yellow border) & people do enter the forest regularly.  *This image is copyright of its original author
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