DOI: 10.7910/dvn/ys0wte
title: Characteristics of Human-Tiger Conflicts in Indian Sundarban

description: The Sundarban, spread across India and Bangladesh constitutes the world’s largest and only mangrove habitat of the Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). Together, harbouring around 202 tigers, it is also infamous as the worlds most severe human-tiger conflict hotspot. Despite this, very fragmentary and inconsistent information exists on the nature and extent of human-tiger conflicts (HTC) in this landscape. To fill this lacuna, a pan landscape survey was undertaken with the aim to mine information on HTC and explore various facets of HTC occurrence in this landscape. The survey was conducted across 76 villages distributed in the eight administrative blocks on the entire fringe of the Sundarban Biosphere Reserve in India between August 2018 to November 2019. 
On the whole, human-tiger conflicts (HTC) were reported far more commonly than cases pertaining to conflicts with crocodiles and sharks (species unidentified). The number of cases of human-wildlife conflicts (HWC) recorded were highest in the Gosaba administrative block, followed by Kultali and Patharpratima, which together account for 74% of the recorded cases. This is interesting as in earlier published records almost no consolidated information exists for the south-24-Parganas Forest Division, although it appears that the two administrative blocks here experience the second highest level of HTC in this landscape after Goasba, in north 24 Parganas. 
Across the forty-year period span of the recorded information, the overall conflicts between humans and tigers appeared to have witnessed a significant increase after 1987. However, this is most likely a result of poor documentation and relatively low probability of people recalling older incidents accurately. The time series change also shows a significant lowering of human-tiger conflicts post year 2000 (Ref. Figure 1.3), which is suggestive of changes brought about by stronger enforcement as well as the beginning of the arrangements for barricading the fringes with nylon nets (Tiger Conservation Plan, STR, 2012; also see, Mukherjee et al., 2012). The level of conflict between humans and crocodiles and humans and sharks, however, did not show significant changes across the same period. The significant lowering of HTC cases held statistically, even when the data was compared across decadal periods. Post completion of the survey, between 1st December 2019 and 31st October 2020, another 22 cases have been recorded, 21 of which resulted in the death of the victims involved. However, these could not be included in the analysis due to the absence of detailed information, which could not be collected due to the paucity of time (and subsequent Covid-19 driven restrictions). 
Most victims of HTC were males (92%), across all age categories of victims, and the majority of the victims belonged to the working age-class, i.e. 19 to 60 years. On average, HTC victims had at least 5 dependent family members, with majority below the poverty line (BPL, as per classification of Govt. of India), earning on average Rs. 25000 (~ USD 336) per annum. Majority of the victims belonged to classified Schedule Caste groups (~69%) and Other Backward Classes (~13%), while only about ~8% belonged to classified Scheduled Tribal groups (indigenous people). This, however, could simply be reflective of the proportional distribution of the various categories in the region. However, a deeper analysis suggests that across the villages surveyed, those with a higher population of Scheduled Tribes experienced a lowered level of HTC, probably indicating that Scheduled Tribes’ are not engaged extensively in natural resource collection compared to other ethnic populations. 
90.14% of the victims were Hindus, and only 9.9% of the victims were Muslim and Christian. Compared to the distribution of different religious groups, where Muslims constitute around 30% of the population of south 24 Parganas, their representation in the sample of victims was relatively low at 9.5% of the total number of victims recorded. Irrespective of the religious background of victims, the majority of HTC victims were illiterate (64 – 77.8%), and around 79% of the victims were dependent on forest-based livelihoods, primarily fishing, crab and prawn collection and honey collection as the primary source of their income. 
Although around 52.4% of the victims/victim’s family, reported to be owning tillable agriculture land, the average land holding was 0.2 acres, which is extremely small to provide sustainable income from traditional agricultural practices. Further, during interviews, several people reported an increased salinity in their lands due to the inundation of bunds/dykes during natural calamities, leading to saline water inflow into their lands. Such increased salinity of land often renders the land unfit for agriculture. Only 15.6% of the victims or their families owned a fishing boat, indicating that even the majority who were forest-based resource dependent, relied on borrowing or renting boats locally.
An independent analysis using the survey data and the populations statistics data from the Census of India, 2011, suggested some interesting trends. Illiteracy, and marginal occupations such as agricultural wage labour, impacted the level of conflicts that people of surveyed villages experienced. It is intuitive that such populations will be forced to depend extensively on natural resource collections to supplement their livelihoods, and thus become an economic section that is specifically vulnerable to HTC. 
Further, it is not surprising that most of the victims were dependent on forest-based livelihoods, and majority of the HTC cases (~91%) were reported to have occurred either in the core area, or in the buffer areas (reserve forests). About 62% of the cases that recorded to have occurred in village lands (n = 42), were from 1980 to 2000, while the remaining were reported between 2001 and 2012, with only 10 cases (23.8%) after 2001. It must be noted that by 2012, the nylon net barrier establishment was complete across an exceptionally large section of the fringe forests, effectively preventing tigers from moving out of forests and into villages. However, a few tigers occasionally still manage to come out of the forests each year, even to this day. Since 2010, the West Bengal Forest Department has also been effectively managing to either drive tigers back, or in capturing them from villages and releasing them back into the forests. Nevertheless, the data is supportive of the fact that in Sundarban, unlike some other Tiger Reserves of India, majority of the cases occur when people enter forests for various purposes. It was also observed that the majority of the cases that were reported to have occurred inside the forests (core or buffer) or even in open waters, most resulted in the death of the victims, when compared to the incidents reported to have occurred in the village areas (See figure 1.5). This is understandable, as in village areas help is closer at hand, than compared to when victims encounter tigers away from human habitations. This was further corroborated by the observation that during the HTC incidents occurring in the villages, the average number of people present near the victim was around ~16 people. Comparatively, the average number of people present with the victim in incidents that occurred away from village areas was 4.9 ± 2.7 people.
The average group size of people also appeared to be correlated to the occupation that victims were pursuing. Besides, farming, which due to its locational specificity ensures a larger mass of people around any potential victim at any given point of time, different predominant forest-based livelihoods pursuits entailed varying sizes of aggregation of people (see figure 1.10). By far, honey collection seemed to accrue larger aggregations, as the number of eyewitnesses present around HTC victims who had reportedly gone into forests to collect honey were significantly higher than number of people present with victims who went into forests to fish, collect prawns or crabs. People venturing into forests to collect crabs also had relatively smaller aggregations compared to the victims who went to forests to collect prawns, honey or for fishing. This is understandable as most forest-based livelihoods are undertaken in groups, rather than by people individually. This is especially true for honey collection, as the period of honey collection is confined to 3-4 months a year, witnessing a larger number of collectors entering the forest, often camping for several days and nights, and hauling large caches of honey collected from natural Apis Dorsata hives. On the other hand, crab collection requires less people compared to all the other forest resources to increase catch sizes. Crab collection is typically carried out by groups of 3-4 people who venture into suitable areas in the forest, usually narrow creeks, positioning themselves over burrow openings inside natural pools to lift crabs out by attaching baits at the end of handheld fishing lines (Pers. Obs.). Crabs being extremely sensitive to vibrations, a minimal group size of people is required to optimise catch sizes in single hauls. Prawn fishing on the other hand is usually done sitting atop boats while shrimp fry are caught by wading through relatively shallow waters using a fine fish net. Fishing is also popularly carried out using cast nets and is carried with fewer people. Added to the increased vulnerability that smaller groups face, the commercial demand for certain resources such as tiger prawns, crabs, certain species of fish, forces people dependent on these resources for livelihoods, to put in more time trying to harvest them. Consequently, many resource collectors today often spend multiple days inside forests in attempts to collect large catches and thus bring lucrative returns, despite the entailing higher risks of tiger attacks. 
Thus, most victims died due to HTC incidents when involved in the collection of forest-based resources, compared to when farming in the village lands (See figure 1.5), and most of the victims attacked when they were either on the ground or on boats. Rarely were they attacked when in the water (Figure 1.6). Interestingly, most victims were also attacked by tigers when they were walking or standing erect on the ground, or in the water. This is contrary to findings from other places, such as the Terai belt, where majority of victims were attacked by tigers when in a crouching position (Chatterjee et al. 2017). Victims who were attacked when on their boats were in a sitting or crouching position when attacked, but the overall proportion of such cases was relatively low (see Figure 1.9). It may be noted here that the ground substrate of most of the areas of Sundarban forests is comprised of such soft clay that human feet invariably sink deep into it, making travelling an arduous task, and intuitively making people standing in, or walking appear short. It is interesting to note, that when the influence of posture (standing, squatting, lying), substrate (ground, water, boat) and the group size present with the victim during the incident, on the outcome of the incident (death or survived), was investigated, both posture and group size had a significant impact on people dying as a result of an attack. This meant that irrespective of the substrate people were situated upon, their probability of dying as a result of the attack increased with changing posture (standing &lt; squatting &lt; lying) and decreasing number of people resent with the victim. 
Another interesting finding is that over the four decadal periods, the number of victims of HTC who ventured when fishing appeared to have significantly decreased, compared to victims venturing for crab collection, which contrarily to this observation, appeared to have increased over time (Figure 1.14). This is likely to be indicative of the changing trends, wherein crab collection in recent times has become a lucrative source of income due to an increase in demand for different edible estuarine crab species (Choudhury et al. 2008). 
Thus, several aspects appeared to be responsible for increasing the probability of being attacked, the most important of these appeared to be the presence of people in the forest, being on the ground in a standing position, and in smaller group sizes. Most people who died were in smaller group sizes, or in other words, the average group size of people present with the HTC victims who were rescued and survived to tell the tale of the incident where significantly larger, compared to the average group size present with people who died on the spot or were rescued and died enroute (Figure 1.10). 
Further, interestingly, 60% of the rescued and surviving victims, also received timely medical aid and treatment, while only around 37.5% of the victims who were rescued but died, had received any form of medical attention (Figure 1.16). This suggests that the availability of medical facilities plays a crucial role in determining if a victim rescued from an HTC incident will survive or not, although the severity of the injuries is also likely to play a key role in the death or survival of the victim. Lastly, most HTC incidents were recorded roughly during the early morning hours to midday, with a significant drop in cases recorded to have occurred in the afternoon, evening, or night. This is because most people venture out into forests exceedingly early, often before dawn in this region, which could be a direct implication of the sweltering heat that this region experiences almost throughout the year, or as a strategy to avoid being detected by the patrol boats of the forest department. Nevertheless, this period of human activity in the forests, also closely coincides with the activity pattern of tigers here as suggested by Naha et al.’s study of radio-collared tigers in this landscape (Naha et al. 2016). Such overlap of activity periods may increase the chances of negative encounters between people and tigers.
While it is understood that various other ecological factors also may have an important role as ultimate drivers of HTC, it is clear from the current survey results that the socio-economic status of villagers living on the fringe, especially their low-income occupations are primary drivers of HTC in this landscape. While, posture, substrate, time of forest visit, etc., can all be key drivers of adverse outcomes of individual encounters, the sheer low number of HTC incidents that occur outside protected forest boundaries bears witness to the fact that Sundarban’s infamous image as a conflict hotspot, is primarily because people venture into the forests. Local communities’ dependence on natural resources to offset low incomes from marginal occupations such as wage labour, is the main reason for people falling prey to tiger attacks. Therefore, it is imperative that all conflict mitigation initiatives in this landscape must make a concerted approach to alleviate the lives of local people such that they can live sustainably and well, without depending on forest-based natural resources as a primary source of income.
description: The date has been collated and tabulated using an Open Data Kit platform to enable remote entry and standardisation of entries.
The data pertains to human-tiger conflict incidents recorded in the Sundarbans region of West Bengal, India, as recalled by surviving victims, their relatives, or eyewitnesses, collected during a survey carried out between August 2018 and November 2019. 
The first row in the data set, i.e. the column headers are self-explanatory, in describing the type of data contained in that column. 
Columns ‘A’ to ‘BC’ contain qualitative information about the various characteristics of the incident as well some socioeconomic parameters of the victim, while columns ‘BD’ to ‘BI’ contain responses to open-ended questions on knowledge and perceptions. 
Victims’ names were removed to preserve anonymity. 
Gaps in recall of certain aspects of each incidents are represented by blank cells or ‘NA’.