Addressing tiger-human conflict

We appreciate the role our existing Forest Tiger Response Team (FTRT) played during the different tiger-attack incidents in the Sundarbans from May 12 to May 17. Goni, Khairul, Tanvir and their team acted swiftly on hearing the tiger attack news and on three occasions recovered the dead bodies of the victims. On another three tiger attack incidents they helped rescue injured people from the forest and quickly transferred them to hospitals.

The task of forming additional village-based response teams that was earlier taken on by Modinul, Yasin and Ashraful is progressing well. They have completed meetings with all the Upazilla Nirbahi Officers (UNO) and the District Commissioners (DC) of Satkhira, Barguna and Khulna. Now having taken the approvals of the local administration and completing all formalities, Modinul and his team will finally roll up their sleeves and get to forming the village teams, the first of which will be formed in Burigoalini, a village of Satkhira.

Deer poaching survey

In the end of April, Samiul Mohsanin a tiger scholar of Sundarbans Tiger Project (STP) started a deer (prey) poaching survey to investigate the scale of prey meat consumption at eight upazillas adjacent to the Sundarbans. Prey reduction is a serious threat to any tiger population and there are signs that it is occurring in the Sundarbans with “snaring” being a common practice along with other traps of different kinds. The market for deer meat consumption is thought to be largely local, but the overall scale of the problem is unknown.




This study will also help us understand people’s attitudes toward legislation and conservation factors associated with prey poaching and consumption.
A total of 800 households were selected randomly for the survey. Samiul was assisted by STP’s wildlife technicians Mizan, Alam and field assistants Hanif and Liton. They started from Dacope and moved on to Koyra, Shyamnagar, Mongla, Morrelganj, Sharankhola, Mathbaria and Pathorghata. They also investigated at least 10 hotels from each upazilla to check if they sell deer meat. To reach the households in different places the team had to rely on different modes of transport– from motorcycle or hand driven boat to hiking because some places were so remote and inaccessible that walking was the only solution.

The team encountered good weather conditions except a few rainy days at the beginning. However, soon after the survey ended there was a hurricane alert for the Cyclone Laila in the coasts. During the field work the team had glimpses of wildlife in and around the Sundarbans including a variety of birds some amphibians, a medium sized King Cobra and some mammals such as rhesus macaques, spotted deer and small-clawed otters. After 22 successful working days the team completed collecting data on 18 May 2010. The results of the survey will be published in a couple of months, so interested readers will have to wait for the next update to know the outcome.

Stepping out of the boat

Earlier in March we held a workshop for five days on a boat to develop a Communication, Education, Participation (CEPA) roadmap for tiger conservation that would function in line with the Bangladesh Tiger Action Plan. Mr.Frits Hesselink, the lead author of CEPA toolkit, facilitated the workshop. Recently, he has included news about our workshop in his organization’s website, the link to which is -
Link

Nearly all threats to tigers are directly or indirectly linked to human behaviours. In order to conserve tigers, therefore, we have to manage human behaviours to come up with win-win solutions for both tigers and humans. That is why we are working on this behaviour change pathway. During the workshop we identified the key groups and their behaviours that are critically affecting the tigers and the Sundarbans. We also needed to prioritise these tarhet groups and their behaviours to make our work more specific.

However, due to lack of time, we could not finish this behaviour change pathway during the workshop. So back in the office we used the workshop inputs to develop it further. We also wanted our previous participants to know about the completed pathway so that they could give their feedback on that. As a result we arranged a follow up workshop after a month’s interval.



Our second workshop was held on May 12, but this time not on a boat. This day long workshop began in the conference room of Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh (WTB) with Mr. Enayetullah Khan Chairman of WTB making an inauguration speech and Prof. Md Anwarul Islam, CEO of WTB following next. As tiger conservation is a huge task that involves a large network and the participation of people from different walks of life, we tried to include representatives from a wide number of NGOs of whom some were present in the previous workshop and some were attending for the first time. With the help of the participants we prioritized the behaviours of the target audiences and in this way made our work more specific otherwise it would have been difficult to change so many behaviours all at once.

We also introduced “Miradi” to the participants. Miradi is conservation management software that has various uses in conservation projects. However, it has not yet become popular in Bangladesh and many organizations still do not know much about it.

Finally we held an open discussion with the participants to find out the different ways our potential partners could collaborate to conserve the tigers and the Sundarbans.

Nazneen Ahmed
Dhaka