Tigers, humans forced to cohabit India forest

By Sam Dolnick

updated 6:51 p.m. ET Sept. 19, 2008

JHARKHALI, India - The fishermen were hauling in the first net of the morning when the tiger pounced.

Kumaresh Mondal managed to run a few steps before the 450-pound beast knocked him down with a leap, tore into his throat, and dragged his limp body into the dense mangrove forest.

"I tried to chase the tiger, but I couldn't find any path," said Monoranjan Mondal, another of the four men fishing that day in March. "There were no tracks, no broken branches... He just took him away."

The Sundarbans, a tangle of unforgiving islands at the mouth of the Ganges River, are home to perhaps the world's largest population of wild tigers — as well as millions of the poorest people in India and Bangladesh. Despite decades of attempts to keep the tigers at bay, they still kill about two dozen people every year.

Now, experts fear environmental changes and shrinking land could lead to more tiger-human conflicts, with disastrous results for both. Villagers who can no longer grow enough crops are venturing into the tigers' domain in search of fish, crabs and honey to sell. And tigers are creeping ever closer to villagers in search of fresh water and food, according to scientists who track their movement.

"There should be no people living here," said Pranabes Sanyal, former field director of the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve. "It's too dangerous."

In the Sundarbans, whose 3,700-square-mile mangrove forest is the world's largest, families scrape by as stubborn rice farmers, overmatched fishermen and barefoot honey collectors. Nearly everyone has a friend or a relative who was attacked by a tiger. There are believed to be close to 250 tigers on the Indian side of the Sundarbans, and another 250 on the Bangladesh side.

No choice but to venture out
The predator's long shadow looms large over village life. Tigers are fixtures in folk songs and mud-roofed shrines, real-life monsters who steal away those who test them.

Madhusudan Mondal saw a tiger kill his father and two other men while they were looking for honey in the forest six years ago. Still, he enters the woods every spring to collect honey, which can earn him thousands of rupees, compared to the 70 rupees ($1.75) a day he makes working the fields.

Gautam Singh / AP Amir Naih, 32, shows the wounds from a tiger attack on July 24 while at a hospital in Basanti, on the outskirts of the Sundarbans, on Aug. 5.

"I have to go," shrugged Mondal, a father of seven. "I have to make a living."

Honey collectors like Mondal — a common name in the area — walk barefoot into the knotted woods, armed only with a thick branch and a mask worn on the back of the head in hopes of scaring away tigers that folklore says always attack from behind.

To ward off tigers, villagers beat drums and shine floodlights at night. Electrified dummies shock animals that get too close. And recently, officials built a massive nylon fence around the tiger reserve, an ambitious solution that needs constant upkeep.

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