By Sujoy Dhar, IANS
Bali Island (West Bengal) : He used to be a poacher, but today Anil Krishna Mistry preaches conservation with a missionary zeal in the Sunderbans, India’s biggest tiger reserve and the world’s largest mangrove gene pool.
And he also symbolises the massive initiative under way in the archipelago that is turning villagers, once foes of the big cats, into its friends.
“Killing animals was a habit we inherited. I was into poaching till I got involved in conservation efforts from 1999. That changed everything and from poacher I became a protector,” says Mistry, now principal field officer of noted conservationist Belinda Wright’s Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI).
His stoic face breaks into a smile as hundreds of children in this island – as part of animal week celebrations – shout out a pledge to protect the endangered tiger population of the Sunderbans.
Today the likes of Anil inspire so many, says Wright.
“Small boys and girls now go to the villages and tell their parents, relatives, neighbours not to kill animals. The Sunderbans children are real tough and they say ‘don’t kill the deer, don’t kill the tiger’.
“It is a modest beginning but a very positive one,” says Wright aboard a launch that cuts through the vast Sunderbans canvas.
Wright, whose WPSI now implements a conservation project in Sundarbans, was in the island to celebrate with a large number of school children the World Animal Week that is observed every year from Oct 4 to 10.
“We go about telling people that tiger is our pride and we have to protect it. We also tell them that if we kill deer we will only cause peril to ourselves since tigers, which prey on deer for food, would then stray into our human habitation and prey on us,” says Parthapratim Mandal, a 15-year-old boy.
Mandal is a member of the nature club of Bijoynagar Adarsha Vidyamandir (BAV), a school on Bali island.
Today every school in the Sundarbans has a nature club. Of the total 1,247 students at BAV, about 400 are members of the club who campaign against poaching and promote conservation of the biodiversity in the Sundarbans, which is a Unesco World Heritage site.
The change in attitude is unthinkable given the hostility between the Sunderbans villagers and forest officials until just a few years ago.
“You could not even dream of venturing inside the villages till a few years ago. We were not allowed inside – such was their irritation against us. But now that has changed drastically as a sustained campaign has turned us into comrades to protect wildlife,” says Niraj Singhal, field director, the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve.
“There was only mistrust and animosity then but the campaign and some symbolic initiatives like health camps brought about a change as you can see for yourself. Villagers are cooperative and involved in protection. This year alone about 80 animals, including wild boar and deer, were rescued by villagers and handed over to us,” says Singhal.
“We have 25 village committees combining villagers and our representatives to carry out protection work,” he says.
Sundarbans Biosphere Reserve (SBR) joint director Pradip Vyas says: “Tigers that had strayed into human habitation for preying used to be butchered by villagers earlier.
“But not so any more thanks to the awareness and participation of villagers in conservation. Now they hand over the stray deer to us. Given the fact that the Sundarbans villagers are no vegetarians like people in Rajasthan, that is a big change.”
A debate is now raging over the exact tiger population of the Sundarbans. Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) researchers entrusted by the forest department to count the animals with a new software last year dropped the bombshell that the big cats there numbered at around a low 75 – as against 271 announced after the 2004 pug mark census.
But Vyas says the ISI method could be faulty.
“The figure they gave is part of an experiment. They took only part of the pugmarks and not all the pugmarks. Now the government of India has adopted a new method of counting across India and we are offering 40,000 data to the Wildlife Society of India (WSI) in keeping with that,” says Vyas.
“At any time the tiger population here hovers around the 271 figure,” he says.
But the tiger is a threatened animal in the Sunderbans for more than one reason. Due to a rise in the sea level as a result of global warming, the core tiger habitats – Dalhousie and Bhangadoyani – are slowly going under water, forcing the big cats to migrate from the southern to the northern parts near Sudhannakhali and Sojnekhali.
The Sunderbans is a vast area covering 4,262 square km, including a mangrove cover of 2,125 sq km, in India alone, with a larger portion in Bangladesh.
The vast tract of the Sunderbans and saltwater swamps is formed at the lower part of the Ganges Delta extending about 260 km along the Bay of Bengal from the Hooghly River Estuary in India to the Meghna River Estuary in Bangladesh.