3 Sundarbans villages see 46% drop in tiger encounters

Kolkata: Findings of a recent study released ahead of World Environment Day on June 5 have found how safer livelihood practices have reduced human-tiger conflicts across three fringe forest villages — Deulbari, Maipith and Binodpur — in the fragile ecosystem of the Sundarbans by 46% over seven years.

The villages come under Kultali block, one of the most conflict-prone zones in the region.

Forest visits for fuelwood harvesting also reduced by 70% and average household income per month increased by Rs 800 after the households were provided support to rear backyard poultry and goats as safer livelihood options, says the study by Arshia Bajpai of TERI School of Advanced Studies (TERISAS), New Delhi, Prosenjit Sheel, Divya Mehra, Samir Kumar Sinha and Abhishek Ghoshal of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI) and Santra Karmakar and Amitava Roy of Lokmata Rani Rashmoni Mission.

According to Ghoshal, human-wildlife conflict mitigation head at WTI, all villages where the study spanned are located within 1 km of the forest boundary and where the main livelihood activities include fishing and harvesting of other forest-based resources, such as honey, crab, fuelwood and prawn seeds.

“The study analyses impacts of safer and energy-efficient livelihood practices — goat and poultry rearing and improved cooking stoves (ICS) — in reducing forest dependency of local communities and strengthening human-tiger coexistence across the three villages. In total, 450 households participated in the livelihood intervention and 825 in the cookstove intervention across the three villages. Beneficiaries belonged to an adult age group ranging from 18 to 80 years and all were women,” said lead author Bajpai.

The average number of visits to the forest, the study says, decreased from 19.5 to 5.6 per month between 2012-18 and 2019-25, a dip by about 70%, corresponding to a mean decline of 13.9 visits per household per month. “Fuelwood harvest among ICS beneficiaries decreased by about one-third per household from 9.6 kg/day to 6.8 kg/day after intervention. Across the three villages, average household income increased from Rs 3,189 to Rs 3,977 per month following the interventions. The mean rise in monthly household income was Rs 788,” says the study, which was recently published in global journal Elsevier.

Most importantly, Ghoshal said, the estimated average annual human-tiger negative interactions in the three villages declined by 46% from 1.9 per year during 2012-2018 (13 cases) to 1 during 2019-2025 (7 incidents). “A total of four reported instances of public aggression in response to tiger straying were documented in project landscape during 2010-2018, whereas, only one such incident was recorded during 2019-2025,” said Roy, general secretary (honorary) of LRRM.

Most of the beneficiaries surveyed (98%; 441 out of 450) reported a positive attitude towards tiger conservation.