Sundarbans: Climate Change exacerbates woes of ‘tiger widows’

SUNDARBANS, West Bengal: Climate change caused the saline Sunderbans waters, made agriculture unprofitable, and reduced the tiger habitat in the environmentally vulnerable area.

In pursuit of raw honey that would sell for more money because both of his sons were unemployed and money was running out, Biswajit Mistry left his house early one summer morning. Two days later, his body was found, mangled and clearly the victim of a tiger assault.

More than a year later, his wife laments the unfortunate circumstances that put her 68-year-old husband literally in the jaws of death: climate change that made the area’s water salty, made agriculture unprofitable, reduced the size of the tiger habitat, and the Covid aftermath that deprived her children of employment. With her husband’s tragic passing, Lakshmi has joined the ranks of the marshland’s ‘tiger widows.’ She claimed that her husband left their home in the Sundarbans’ Kakmari village to travel into the forbidden Marichjhapi jungle, which is home to many tigers, in order to gather better quality raw honey. The deeper you go into the jungle, the purer the honey is.

Because Biswajit was killed in a protected jungle, the family has not received any compensation for his death. Lakshmi, one of the numerous women who have lost their husbands to tiger attacks in recent years, claimed that they can hardly afford two meals a day.

According to government statistics, the 54 islands that make up the Indian portion of the Sunderbans have a population of roughly 40 lakh people and about 100 tigers. It is referred to as a global hotspot for human-tiger conflict since it has one of the greatest single populations of tigers in one location. The Indian portion accounts for 40 per cent of the total area of Sundarbans.

Nihar Ranjan Raptan, Director of the Sundarbans-based NGO Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra (GGBK) explained the issue. Tiger attacks were originally fairly common, but their frequency decreased as more natives left the area in pursuit of work. During the pandemic, this altered.

The year preceding COVID-19 outbreak, in 2019, there were 30 tiger attacks, according to data compiled by GGBK. This drastically increased to 78 in 2020—COVID’s first year—and 60 in 2021. According to Raptan, the increase in tiger assaults is taking on a new dimension as a result of climate change. He added that, earlier tigers would enter populated areas only in winters, but now with shrinking forests, such attacks have become more frequent. The current situation in the region appears to be the result of a combination of previously unrelated events.

“All migrant workers working in different parts of the country returned home during the pandemic due to which livelihood opportunities reduced drastically. As agriculture is fast becoming unviable due to the increase in salinity of the water because of sea level rise, there were many aspirants for one job,” he added.

The lockdown brought on by the coronavirus had a terrible effect on both the economy and the way of life for thousands of migrant workers. For over two months in 2020, the hardship of migrant labourers who were returning from a number of urban areas to their communities hundreds of kilometres away dominated the news.

The Sundarbans, one of India’s most affected places by climate change and home to a sizable mangrove forest, is experiencing worsening issues for its residents. The families of those slain in a tiger attack receive compensation of ₹4 lakh from the government. If it takes place in limited forest regions, this is not done.

Between 1985 and 2009, 789 people were attacked by tigers, 666 of whom died as a result of their wounds, according to a 2017 study titled Analyzing Human-Wildlife Conflicts In Sundarban by Chandan Surabhi Das, Associate Professor of Geography at Barasat Government College. There were 27.75 events on average per year.

There is a ‘tiger fence’ to provide separation between the tiger habitat and human-inhabited areas to avoid such invasions, but even then, individuals enter unlawfully, an official said. The restricted areas are dangerous and have a robust tiger population.

The lives of the tiger widows of the Sundarbans have grown even more difficult since their husbands were taken by the big cat on the prowl.