VZCZCXRO1022
RR RUEHAST RUEHHM RUEHLN RUEHMA RUEHPB RUEHPOD RUEHTM
DE RUEHNE #3006/01 3320936
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 270936Z NOV 08
FM AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 4393
INFO RUEHCI/AMCONSUL KOLKATA 3107
RUEHCG/AMCONSUL CHENNAI 3868
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 2926
RHEBAAA/DEPT OF ENERGY WASHDC
RUEAEPA/EPA WASHDC
RUEHZN/ENVIRONMENT SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 NEW DELHI 003006 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR OES/FO, OES/PCI, OES/ENRC, OES/ENV, AND SCA/INS 
INTERIOR FOR FRED BAGLEY AND MINI NAGENDRAN 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SENV TSPL KSCA IN
SUBJECT: TIGERS 40; HUMANS 1:  PROTECTING BOTH SPECIES IN INDIA'S 
SUNDARBANS NATIONAL PARK 
 
NEW DELHI 00003006  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶1.  SUMMARY:  India's Sundarbans National Park is famous for its 
man-eating tigers which on average kill approximately 40 people per 
year.  The tables turn on the protected species when they stray into 
local villages or are targeted by poachers.  ESTHOff visited the 
Sundarbans and met with forest officials, local villagers, and NGO 
representatives to discuss the results of ongoing efforts aimed at 
reducing human-animal conflict.  Thanks to nylon fencing and 
community awareness and organizing efforts, the number of deaths of 
both species is down substantially.  However, experts estimate the 
overall number of tigers within Sundarbans National Park is far 
below the official 2004 figure of 274 and a recent incident has 
revealed government and NGO complacency towards poaching.  END 
SUMMARY 
 
-------------------------------- 
Human Pressure on the Sundarbans 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  The Sundarbans is the largest estuarine mangrove forest on 
earth, 40 percent of which lies within the territorial confines of 
India with the other 60 percent in Bangladesh.  The Indian 
Sundarbans is crisscrossed by hundreds of streams and tributaries 
and hosts a population of approximately 4.1 million living on 54 of 
100 islands.  Current estimates of the human population density are 
876 per sq.km. - over twice India's average of 386 per sq.km. 
Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) Atanu Raha noted the 
high population density and stated that growing population pressure 
was a primary concern for the forest department.  Unlike other tiger 
reserves in India, there are no permanent human inhabitants in the 
Sundarbans Tiger Reserve (STR), the core area of which is designated 
as the Sundarban National Park.  However, Raha estimates there are 
now over 1000 villages surrounding the reserve whose villagers make 
their living from fishing and collecting forest products in and 
around the STR. 
 
¶3.  Human-animal conflict has serious repercussions in the 
Sundarbans for both species.  Population pressure has reduced 
traditional tiger habitat and their prey base which has led to fewer 
tigers.  Perhaps more dramatically from the human perspective, the 
close proximity of people to tigers results in dozens of human 
deaths each year, many of which come during the legalized April to 
May honey collection season which sees over 30,000 people enter the 
protected area on forest service permits.  Humans are also attacked 
while fishing from boats as the Sundarbans tigers are excellent 
swimmers who raid the small native fishing boats for their catch. 
Finally, tigers often stray into villages looking for food and come 
into conflict with villagers.  ESTHOff spoke to a villager who 
confirmed that although illegal and dangerous, his fellow villagers 
often entered the STR to make their living.  He also noted a tiger 
had been spotted in the village the week before our visit.  PCCF 
Raha estimates approximately 40 to 50 people die in the Indian 
Sundarbans annually from tiger attack but noted this number is down 
substantially from the 1990s when upwards of 200 people were killed 
by tigers each year. 
 
----------------------- 
Protecting Both Species 
----------------------- 
 
¶4.  The Forest Service has deployed nylon fencing along the borders 
of the STR that face villages.  PCCF Raha readily acknowledged the 
tensile strength of the fencing was far too low to stop any tiger 
that wanted to pass through it but that it appeared the fencing 
acted as a psychological barrier for the tigers.  Several forest 
service personnel described instances where a tiger on one side of 
the fence chased a human on the other but did not attempt to break 
through the fence.  The fencing blends into the forest reasonably 
well and only impacts the movement of tigers near villages.  Unlike 
in other tiger reserves in India neither conservationists nor 
villagers have issued strong objections to the Sundarbans fencing. 
 
¶5.  PCCF Raha as well as frontline forest guards described the 
forest service's pro-active methods of training and raising 
awareness among villagers regarding the need to conserve not only 
tigers, but the forest within the STR as well.  The Forest Service 
set-up 10 Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) in villages fringing 
the STR to educate and involve villagers in various conservation 
methods.  The FPCs focus on providing training on how to deal with a 
tiger in the village.  In the past, the villagers would attack the 
tiger with homemade weapons and agricultural implements.  This often 
resulted in the death of the tiger as well as great bodily injury 
and/or death for several villagers.  The FPCs were formed to reduce 
harm to both tigers and humans and have incorporated designated 
 
NEW DELHI 00003006  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
responders who call the Forest Service and work to reduce panic 
within the village until forest guards arrive to tranquilize and 
remove the tiger.  Official figures record that between 1994 and 
2001, 25 tigers strayed into villages, leading to the death of 10 
tigers at the hands of villagers, while between 2002 and 2006, 20 
tigers entered villages with only one killed by villagers.  Although 
experts agree the historical data is highly suspect and greatly 
underrepresents the presence of tigers in villages, they also note 
no tigers have been killed in self-defense by villagers in 2008. 
 
¶6.  The Government of West Bengal has also created 14 
Eco-development committees to foster participatory management and 
obtain village buy-in for conservation efforts aimed at reducing 
villagers dependence on the forest.  In addition to providing low 
impact infrastructure such as solar lighting, which not only reduces 
fuel wood demands but also discourages tigers from entering 
villages, the Eco-development committees work to foster sustainable 
agricultural practices including aquaculture and excavation of rain 
water irrigation channels to increase agricultural production.  The 
eco-development committees have also begun  planting mangrove trees 
in fringe areas in order to reduce the demand for fuel wood within 
the STR. According to PCCF Raha, these efforts have helped reduce 
anthropogenic impacts on the tiger reserve which has further reduced 
human-animal conflict. 
 
-------------------------------------- 
Current State of the Sundarbans Tigers 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶7.  Despite the efforts of the West Bengal Forest Service, it 
appears the number of tigers within the STR has been steadily 
declining.  Belinda Wright, Executive Director of the Wildlife 
Protection Society of India and Emmy award winning wildlife 
filmmaker, traveled with ESTHOff within the tiger reserve and noted 
what appeared to be a sharp decrease in the available prey base. 
After approximately 12 hours spent on narrow waterways deep in the 
reserve, the sum total of wildlife seen was a handful of deer, a 
rare gangetic dolphin, and very few birds.  This contrasts 
dramatically with other Indian tiger reserves where there is 
abundant and varied wildlife on display.  The Forest Service has 
taken the lack of prey into account and showed ESTHOff a relocation 
and acclimatization center for non-native deer within the STR.  The 
deer are brought to the center from other habitats within West 
Bengal in order to determine whether they can survive and reproduce 
within the Sundarbans.  Forest officers were unable to state whether 
the program had produced any significant results. 
 
¶8.  Ms. Wright has been traveling to the Sundarbans since the 1960s 
and estimates there are currently no more than 80 to 100 tigers left 
within the reserve which is substantially less than the widely 
discredited official 2004 census figure of 274 which was based on 
analysis of pugmarks.  Ms. Wright and Forest Service officials both 
acknowledged the difficulty of taking an accurate census within the 
Sundarbans due to resource constraints and the extremely 
inhospitable nature of the terrain.  Ms. Wright did note that the 
deep mud, heavy brush, forbidding mangroves and the need to move by 
boat, all of which make census taking difficult, did tend to protect 
the Sundarbans tigers from poaching.  According to both Ms. Wright 
and forest officials, there had not been a single case of poaching 
in the Indian Sundarbans in the last fifteen to twenty years. 
 
¶9.  A few days after ESTHOff's visit to the Sundarbans, a dead tiger 
was found floating in a river with bullet wounds.  Forest officials 
initially believed the tiger was killed in self-defense and was not 
the target of poachers as it had not been skinned or dismembered. 
However, media report the West Bengal Criminal Investigations 
Division later arrested a villager who confessed under interrogation 
to shooting the tiger.  The villager and an accomplice had 
apparently climbed a tree and shot the tiger with improvised 
firearms in the hopes of selling its skin and bones in the 
international illegal wildlife market.  However, the tiger 
somersaulted into an estuary and the poachers lost the carcass. 
This incident is considered to be an unorganized, non-professional 
attempt at tiger poaching and has not raised significant concern 
among forest officials. 
 
¶10.  COMMENT:  The efforts of the Forest Service in working to earn 
village support for conservation efforts has definitely borne fruit 
in the Forest Protection and Eco-development committee structure. 
Villagers we spoke with praised the Forest Service and stated the 
relationship had undergone a sea change whereby villagers no longer 
viewed the Forest Service as the enemy.  However, the recent 
poaching incident has revealed long-standing government and NGO 
 
NEW DELHI 00003006  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
complacency on the issue of poaching in the Sundarbans.  END 
COMMENT. 
 
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