ssm@cmu-ri-leg.ARPA (Sesh Murthy) (03/28/85)
Tigers in the forests of West Bengal have killed 22 people in the past three
months, despite the use of electrified human dummies to deter attacks,
officials say.
''The problem is growing,'' said Priyothosh Roy, a forest ranger, in
an interview with the United News of India published today. ''It's
insoluble. All efforts to prevent the killings have proved futile.''
He says tigers killed 56 people in the Sunderbans Reserve Forest,
along the Bangladesh border, last year, and 22 in the past three
months.
According to the West Bengal government, 659 people were killed by
tigers in the Sunderbans in the past 15 years.
India's famed Bengal tigers, once on the verge of extinction, now
number about 40,000 nationwide. They have bounced back under Project
Tiger, a program launched 11 years ago to protect the animals in 15
government reserves.
The government spends about $432 a year on each of the 265 tigers in
the Sunderbans, the biggest reserve.
But villagers say the tigers are thriving at the expense of the
fishermen, woodcutters and honey collectors who make their living in
the park.
''Tell me, why should the government protect these animals which
kill human beings?'' asked Binala Mondal, whose husband was the
latest to be mauled to death in Sunderbans, southeast of Calcutta.
Mrs. Mondal was interviewed by United News of India news agency in
Netidhopani, a town near the reserve.
One novel tactic that failed: life-like human dummies that give off
an electric shock. Forest rangers had hoped the tigers would be
discouraged from attacking men after taking the unsavory bait.
Two weeks ago, forest officials positioned a decoy near a pond. But
tigers ignored the dummy and killed a woman washing clothes in the
same pond.
''Tigers are too clever,'' one villager was quoted as saying. ''They
know the dummies for what they are.''
The danger is not confined to the Sunderbans. David Hunt, a British
bird watcher, was killed by a tiger on Feb. 22 in the Corbett
National Park in Uttar Pradesh state.
Park officials say Hunt wandered into a prohibited area to track an
owl and stumbled onto a tigress with a new litter of cubs.
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