Vanishing Stripes: Save the Bengal Tiger

Sundarbans is classified as Tiger Conservation Landscape of Global Priority. It holds one of the world’s largest remaining Bengal tiger population in a coastal mangrove habitat.  The human–tiger conflict in Sundarbans mangroves is more frequent than in any other area of the world. However, their habitat has been greatly depleted due to over alarming rise in human population and conversion of forests into farms and human settlements. Hunting and forest degradation of the remaining habitat patches has led to the intrusion of the tigers into human settlements.

There are about 8 sub districts whose villagers live adjacent to the forest boundary and are dependent on natural resources within Sundarbans for a number of income generating activities.  The estimates of human kills range from 50-250 people per year mostly honey collectors, fisherman, crab collectors and even forest frontline staff. These villagers also experiences high levels of livestock depredation and face the conflict with the tigers. In 2015, a woman was killed in Gudalur by a tiger which created a state of violence in the location. The angry villagers were on boil and attacked the forest officials and torched their jeeps.

According to Forest Department, at least 3 tiger per year are killed as a result of conflict in Sundarbans. Such high rate of rising conflict will one day result in extinction of the species. To address the conflict situation, Wildlife Trust of India with your support initiated a Rapid Action Project aimed at curbing the immediate threats in these conflict prone villages.  Ten primary response teams (PRTs) are constantly working with forest department for mitigating conflicts in the villages falling under Gurguria Bhubaneswari Gram Panchayat. The rapid action of volunteers in locating the stray tigers is actually contributing the Forest department to capture the tiger and release it in the safe location. Apart from this, the teams are also controlling the crowd and sensitizing them on not to panic during the conflict situation. Along with Forest Department, the team has managed to engage with other concerned stakeholders like village heads, fisherman and farmers clubs, fisherman groups, block developmental offices.

A workshop cum awareness meeting was arranged at Nibedita Mahila Samity (local samity), Purba Gurguria village in presence of 45 community leaders from different farmers clubs, SHGs, and youth clubs. In this workshop, several discussions on importance of Sundarban tigers, cause of conflict, mitigation of the conflicts were discussed with different key stakeholders. Major decisions like distribution of contact numbers of local forest department to among volunteers, village heads, use of shanks, blow horn to raise alarms in tiger presence in vicinity of the area were taken during this workshop. Sixteen such local level awareness meetings have been conducted in conflict prone villages. The members of youth club have volunteered for mitigation of conflicts in the area who have been trained on how to deal with tigers that stray, to decrease the delay in response time when tiger stray into villages. Thesevolunteers are helping the PRTs by informing the forest department about tiger movement in the area. A mock drill was also arranged to sensitize the villagers about the conflict with tigers. Such role-plays help to gauge levels of preparedness for actual conflict situations, and aid in the development of standard operating protocols for village communities and especially the Primary Response Teams (comprised of representatives from conflict-prone villages) that are supposed to monitor and manage such situations to save both human and animal lives. Broad guidelines were also passed on to the villagers to help prevent conflict situations.  

Folk media campaigns have proven to be extremely effective across a number of projects at striking an emotional chord and conveying complex ideas simply and succinctly. A folk media campaign of ‘Bon Bibi’ was arranged by the PRTs which attracted over one thousand people. ‘Bon Bibi’ is the lady of forest and is considered as the god of tiger by people of Sundarbans. People believe that Bon Bibi is protecting the villagers from tiger attacks. Two such programs were arranged with folk songs. This medium was used as a platform to pass on the information among villagers about tigers, their importance and conservation. Posters having the guidelines about the human tiger conflict mitigation were also distributed to block developmental offices (BDO), panchyats, schools, scientists and youth clubs of Sundarban Area. Meetings were arranged with BDOs to provide the information about our work and requested them to inform the villagers about governmental welfare schemes to reduce the the forest dependency. 

Large carnivores are facing a massive decline in their population, which is a global conservation concern. Among large carnivores, tigers especially are continually threatened by number of threats. India, which holds the 70% of the world's tiger population face a challenging task in protecting the species. The tiger population here is confined to small and isolated forests where stochastic events and continuing human impacts had an adverse impact leading it to extinction.

WTI has been a pioneer in addressing the conservation threats to tiger population in India. A number of enforcement initiatives have been taken up by the team in support of the state forest departments to address the rising demand for tiger skin and bones. WTI was the first organization to identify snares as a serious threat to the survival of wildlife, especially tigers, in the Protected Areas of India. Snares made up of loop (noose) of cordage are placed by hunters and poachers, camouflaged with vegetation across an animal trail or other place where an animal is likely to walk through. The big carnivores get trapped in these wires and get entangled.  They are usually placed by local hunters & poachers to illegally collect body parts of big cats and farmers to avoid conflicts with them. In Bandipur TR, WTI in collaboration with Karnataka FD officials conducted many anti snare walks in and around the PA, where the team unearthed more than 1000 deadly snares from an area of over 2200 sq km. Recently, based on local intelligence the team recovered around 56 snares from Kenchanakere, Hunsur district  and Chamundi hills, Karnataka.

In the state of West Bengal, Sundarban TR is a world heritage site. Tigers here notoriously termed as “Maneater” often come in conflict with humans. Apart from livestock depredation, tigers often attack human inside forests when engaged in activities like fishing, fuelwood collection. However, there has been a recent trend of tigers coming inside village and killing humans especially in the winter months. Through your support WTI have conducted sensitization programs in few high conflict villages engaging all stakeholders. We also formulated rapid response teams by involving the youth of the villages whose primary responsibility will be to assist the FD officials in driving the tiger away from human habitation and keeping the crowd in control, to prevent any retaliation. This response team was recently equipped with high powered lights and blow horns to sound an alert in case a tiger is sighted in the village. The field team have also planned to use barriers (through nylon nets) around the village vicinity. In one instance the rapid response team provided local intel to the FD staff in capturing a strayed tiger. Based on the local intel from this team, the FD staff set the trap leading to its successful capture. The FD is planning to release the tiger back into the wild.