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Islam, M.W.; Alam, M.S.; Islam, M.M.
Study of human casualties by bengal tigers (_Panthera tigris tigris L._) in the Sundarbans forest of Bangladesh
2007  Tiger Paper (34): 1-6

Once, the Bengal tiger (_Panthera tigris tigris Linnaeus_ 1758) had a wide range of occurrence in the forests of Bangladesh. It was seen in all the major forests of Bangladesh until the late 1940s (Anonymous, 2000). Now, however, there are no authentic reports of the existence of Bengal tiger in the forests of Bangladesh other than in the Sundarbans. The Sundarbans has an age-old history of man-tiger conflict (Corbett, 1946; Khan, 1961; Mountfort, 1969; Chakrabarty, 1992). From the Management Plan (1931) records it is known that the Forest Department killed 452 Bengal tigers from 1912 to 1921 (Curtis, 1933) and 269 tigers were killed between 1947 and 1971, or an average of 11.2 tigers per year (Salter, 1984). Not only were tigers killed by man, but there were many human casualties by tigers in the nearby Sundarbans. It was reported that between 1975 and 1999, tigers killed a total of 544 people - an average of 22 people per year (Reza, 2000). Over the last fifty years, tigers in the Sundarbans have taken a toll of about 1,000 people. These are only the reported cases (official data); the actual number (unofficial data) may be 30% higher than that. The victims are mostly poor villagers viz., Bawalies (i.e., woodcutters), Mualies (i.e., honey collectors) and fishermen (JJS, 2003). Many of the human casualties occured when the tiger was being attacked by the villagers, who would assemble from all directions with sticks and spears, giving the animal no space to escape. So the tiger would jump on the mob, killing and injuring some people (Gani, 2002).

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