The poaching of tigers in the Sundarbans ~ many of the culprits from neighbouring Bangladesh ~ has been alarming enough; no less a cause for alarm must be that the mangrove delta is today “saturated with the big cats”, to quote the calibration of the Wildlife Institute of India.
The phenomenon, verily the straying of the big cats, has been ascribed to the “high population density”. Indeed, the Sundarbans is said to be the home of as many tigers that the forests can accommodate. Hence arguably the surge in human-animal conflict. The data is embedded in the national tiger census that was conducted in 2018, which had mentioned that the number of big cats in the Sundarbans was 88. That figure had shot up to 96 in the 2020-21 census. The increase in the number of tigers could arguably be one major reason for the rise in straying incidents.
The report suggests that when there are too many tigers in a particular forest, the “young adults” might be compelled to move out in search of new territory. At least eight tigers have strayed near villages in the Sundarbans in the two months since December 2021. They were captured and released into the wild.
The Wildlife Institute of India has directed West Bengal’s forest department to release the tigers that are captured after they stray near villages to areas that have a relatively lower density of the tiger population. Three tigers captured over the past few days in a “forest compartment” called Chamta in the National Park of the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve, have been released.
The Wildlife Institute of India has identified Chamta as a forest block with a notably low density of the tiger population. However, the problem of relocation is rooted in the fact that the “optimum carrying capacity” of a forest is not a static concept. Therefore, relocating tigers to a forest that is different from where they came is a fraught proposition.
The “peak density” of a forest is dependent on several parameters, such as prey base, human interference, and the male-female ratio of tigers. The mangrove delta has been ravaged by a welter of developments. The pandemic is said to have resulted in a manifold increase in human interference. The parameters have changed over time. There is no reason to believe that the parameters in 2022 should be the same as in 2018.
Hundreds of thousands of villagers, who used to work in Bangladesh, have come over to the Sundarbans. To many or the most, the loss of livelihood has forced them to switch over to forestry in search of fish and crabs. Since 2020, more than 30 people have been killed in attacks by tigers. In many cases, villagers enter forests after breaching the nylon nets that mark their boundaries. Nonetheless, the forests with low density of the big cat population are said to be the “best possible option to curb the man-animal conflict”.