THE TIGER NEXT DOOR Living with man-eating Tigers

Imagine being afraid to take a walk in your own neighborhood or even your own backyard. Imagine that there were ferocious predators stalking your hometown. In Bangladesh this fear is very real, and it is known as the Bengal Tiger.

The Royal Bengal Tiger is one of the most spectacular of the big cats, but also one of the most deadly. It is a super-predator, and once was very numerous and successful in Asia. They are native to India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Now one of their biggest populations lies in the Sundarbans located in southern Bangladesh and India. The Tigers can measure up to 8-10 feet long from head to tail and can weigh over 500 pounds.

The average prey animals of the Tiger are

• · Rhesus Monkeys
• · Spotted Deer
• · Axis Deer
• · Marsh Deer
• · Wild Boar
• · Otters

However if Tigers are weakened by injury, sickly, or just too old to hunt for normal prey animals, they wouldn’t hesitate to hunt Humans.Tigers in the Sundarbans Mangrove Forests of Southern Bangladesh are a different story. These Tigers tend to attack and kill Humans on a regular basis. Some people say it is because Human settlements encroach on the tigers territory. Others say it’s because the Tiger has learned to fear Man as a threat due to overhunting in Asia. Still others say we’re just natural enemies. Whatever the case one thing is for certain, Tigers have been killing people in this region on a regular basis for at least the past 2 centuries. These statistics would suggest that the Bengal Tiger is one of the most deadly of the big cats.

According to an Ezine article

by Madan_G_Singh it is estimated that 300,000 people

have been killed by Tigers in the past 200 years.

Fishermen from organized tribal villages that lie just outside The Sundarbans have there livelihood out in the Mangrove swamps throwing great nets into the water to catch large quantities of fish, crabs, shrimp, lobster, and turtles. When they come back they can feed the entire village and sell seafood in the markets. These are the only means for these people to survive after Cyclone Sidr [November 2007] and Cyclone Aila [May 2009] destroyed villages and forced them to move inland. However there is great risk involved even when on the open water. Tigers can swim. And they will swim great distances if they have to because in the Sundarbans the waters rise in the monsoon season and become a series of island chains. If the Tiger doesn’t swim they don’t eat.

There have been many instances where a Tiger has jumped onto fishing boats and dragged helpless victims into the water. There have also been cases of Tiger entering villages and even homes and killing villagers. There are currently approximately 500 Bengal Tigers living in the Sundarbans.

Conflict with Humans is threatening these numbers all the time as a result of people killing invading Tigers. One news article by Monirul Alam a photojournalist from Dhaka talks about a Bengal Tiger that killed a 40-year-old woodcutter called Mabud in the mangrove forest when he was collecting firewood in the area of Char-Shesher. One of his fellow woodcutters, Abul Sarder, stated that five of them ventured into the jungle to collect firewood and suddenly a tiger attacked them. ‘When we had escaped we realised that Mabud had not. We tried to save him but failed to fight off the tiger.' Finally the villagers rallied a group large enough to fend off the Tiger and were able to recover Mabud's dead body. Later on that Tiger had returned to the village looking for his meal. The villagers mobbed the Tiger with bats, pipes, and rocks and killed it.

According to the article Thirty people were killed by tigers in Bangladesh last year, and three tigers by people. On average estimates range from 50-250 people per year. Keen to preserve the endangered Royal Bengal Tiger, the local government’s advice to people who are invaded by Tigers is to contact the forest ranger, who will arrive with a tranquilizer gun. But that can take up to 12 hours. So the villagers decide to take matters into their own hands for survival.

In my opinion, the words of one villager interviewed by Monirul Alam on the scene where Mabud was killed tells it all, “We enter the jungle searching for food and the tiger kills us, the tiger comes to our village, we kill the Tiger”. I think it would be smarter if the government wants to protect Tigers they should issue tranquilizer guns to people that are forced to live in close proximity to them.