The tiger is the largest living cat species and a member of the genus Panthera. It is most recognisable for its dark vertical stripes on orange fur with a white underside. An apex predator, it primarily preys on ungulates, such as deer and wild boar. It is territorial and generally a solitary but social predator, requiring large contiguous areas of habitat to support its requirements for prey and rearing of its offspring. Tiger cubs stay with their mother for about two years and then become independent, leaving their mother's home range to establish their own.
The Bengal tiger is a population of the Panthera tigris tigris subspecies and the nominate tiger subspecies. It ranks among the biggest wild cats alive today. It is considered to belong to the world's charismatic megafauna.
The Ganges Delta is a river delta in Eastern South Asia predominantly covering the Bengal region of the subcontinent, consisting of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the world's largest river delta and it empties into the Bay of Bengal with the combined waters of several river systems, mainly those of the Brahmaputra river and the Ganges river. It is also one of the most fertile regions in the world, thus earning the nickname the Green Delta. The delta stretches from the Hooghly River east as far as the Meghna River.
The Sundarbans National Park is a national park, tiger reserve and biosphere reserve in West Bengal, India. It is part of the Sundarbans on the Ganges Delta and adjacent to the Sundarban Reserve Forest in Bangladesh. It is located to south-west of the Bangladesh. The delta is densely covered by mangrove forests, and is one of the largest reserves for the Bengal tiger. It is also home to a variety of bird, reptile and invertebrate species, including the salt-water crocodile. The present Sundarban National Park was declared as the core area of Sundarban Tiger Reserve in 1973 and a wildlife sanctuary in 1977. On 4 May 1984 it was declared a national park. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 1987, and it has been designated as a Ramsar site since 2019. It is considered as a World Network of Biosphere Reserve from 1989.
Sundarbans is a mangrove area in the delta formed by the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers in the Bay of Bengal. Sundarban Reserve Forest (SRF) of Bangladesh is the largest mangrove forest in the world. It spans the area from the Baleswar River in Bangladesh's division of Khulna to the Hooghly River in India's state of West Bengal. It comprises closed and open mangrove forests, land used for agricultural purpose, mudflats and barren land, and is intersected by multiple tidal streams and channels. Sundarbans is home to the world's largest area of mangrove forests. Four protected areas in the Sundarbans are enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, viz. Sundarbans West (Bangladesh), Sundarbans South (Bangladesh), Sundarbans East (Bangladesh) and Sundarbans National Park (India).
Man-Eaters of Kumaon is a 1944 book written by hunter-naturalist Jim Corbett. It details the experiences that Corbett had in the Kumaon region of India from the 1900s to the 1930s, while hunting man-eating Bengal tigers and Indian leopards. One tiger, for example, was responsible for over 400 human deaths. Man-Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, and contains 10 stories of tracking and shooting man-eaters in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of the twentieth century. The text also contains incidental information on flora, fauna and village life. Seven of the stories were first published privately as Jungle Stories.
Tigers in India constitute more than 70% of the global population of tigers. Tiger is officially adopted as the National Animal of India on recommendation of the National Board for Wildlife since April 1972. In popular local languages, tigers are called baagh, puli or sher. The Bengal Tiger is the species found all across the country except Thar desert region, Punjab and Kutch region. These can attain the largest body size among all the Felidae, and therefore are called Royal Bengal Tigers. Skin hides measuring up to 4 meters are recorded. The body length measured from its nose to the tip of the tail can reach up to 3 meter and it can weigh up to 280 Kilogram with male being heavier than the female. The average life expectancy is about 15 years. However, they are known to survive for up to 20 years in wild. It is solitary and territorial. Tigers in India usually hunts chital, sambar, barasingha, wild buffalo nilgai and gaur and other animals such as the wild pig for prey and sometimes even other predators like leopards and bears. There are instances of Elephant calves hunted by tigers.
The Indian leopard is a subspecies of the leopard that is widely distributed on the Indian subcontinent and is threatened by illegal trade of skins and body parts, and persecution due to human-leopard conflict and livestock depredation. A national census of leopards around tiger habitats was carried out in India in 2014, except the northeast. 7,910 individuals were estimated in surveyed areas and a national total of 12,000–14,000 speculated.
Gosaba is a village and a gram panchayat within the jurisdiction of the Gosaba police station in the Gosaba CD block in the Canning subdivision of the South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal.
Kultali is a village within the jurisdiction of the Kultali police station in the Kultali CD block in the Baruipur subdivision of the South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal.
A man-eater is an individual animal or being that preys on humans as a pattern of hunting behavior. This does not include the scavenging of corpses, a single attack born of opportunity or desperate hunger, or the incidental eating of a human that the animal has killed in self-defense. However, all three cases may habituate an animal to eating human flesh or to attacking humans, and may foster the development of man-eating behavior.
Tiger attacks are a form of human–wildlife conflict which have killed more humans than attacks by any of the other big cats, with the majority of these attacks occurring in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Southeast Asia.
Land of the Tiger is a BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural history of the Indian subcontinent, first transmitted in the UK on BBC Two in 1997. The production team covered the breadth and depth of India, from the Himalayan mountains in the north to the reef-fringed islands of the Indian Ocean, to capture footage of the country's wild places and charismatic wildlife.
Ganges is a nature documentary series for television on the natural history of the River Ganges in India and Bangladesh. It showcases the variety of animals and habitats that are to be found along the river's 2,510 km (1,557 mi) reach, as well as the cultures, traditions and religions of the large human population that it supports. For Hindus, the Ganges is a sacred river and a place of pilgrimage, and it holds a deep influence on their religion and culture as well as being their lifeblood. Over the course of three episodes, the series is presented as a journey from the source of the river in the high Himalaya to its delta at the Bay of Bengal.
Bonbibi, is a legendary lady of the forest, dubbed as a guardian spirit of the forests and venerated by both the Hindu and the Muslim residents of the Sundarbans. She is called upon mostly by the honey-collectors and the woodcutters before entering the forest for protection against the attacks from the tigers. It is believed that the demon king, Dakkhin Rai, an arch-enemy of Banbibi actually appears in the disguise of a tiger and attacks human beings.
Sundarbans East Wildlife Sanctuary, a protected forest in Bangladesh, extends over an area of 31,227 ha. of mangrove forest. It was established in 1977 under the Bangladesh Wildlife (Preservation) (Amendment) Act, 1974, having previously been a forest reserve. It is the most fertile of the three, non-adjoining wildlife sanctuaries established in the Sundarbans at that time, the others being the Sundarbans West Wildlife Sanctuary and the Sundarbans South Wildlife Sanctuary. The dominant mangrove species is "sundri" from which the Sundarbans region gets its name.
Leopard attacks are attacks inflicted upon humans, other leopards and other animals by the leopard. The frequency of leopard attacks on humans varies by geographical region and historical period. Despite the leopard's extensive range from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, attacks are regularly reported only in India and Nepal. Among the five "big cats", leopards are less likely to become man-eaters—only jaguars and snow leopards have a less fearsome reputation. However, leopards are established predators of non-human primates, sometimes preying on species as large as the western lowland gorilla. Other primates may make up 80% of the leopard's diet. While leopards generally avoid humans, they tolerate proximity to humans better than lions and tigers, and often come into conflict with humans when raiding livestock.
WildTeam is an international conservation organisation which began in 2003 as The Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh and the Sundarbans tiger project. The Sundarbans Tiger project started out as a Bangladesh Forest Department and University of Minnesota research initiative; focusing on the ecology and conservation of tigers in the Bangladesh Sundarbans. Between 2003 and 2008, the Wildlife Trust of Bangladesh carried out research and education work in relation to Bengal tiger, Hoolock gibbon, Asian elephant, and Asian black bear.
Environmental impact of development in the Sundarbans, is the study of environmental impact on Sundarban, the largest single tract mangrove forest. It consist of a geographical area of 9,629 square kilometres (3,718 sq mi), including 4,185 square kilometres (1,616 sq mi) of reserve forest land, and is a natural region located partly in southern Bangladesh and partly in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is ecologically a southern part of the Gangetic delta between the Hooghly river in India on the west and the Meghna river in Bangladesh on the east and is bounded by the Ganga-Padma, the Padma-Meghna on the north and by the Bay of Bengal on the south. The area that is not reserve forest land is inhabited by human settlements with a total population around 4 million (2003).
Jungle Nama is a graphic verse novel written by Indian author Amitav Ghosh and illustrated by Pakistani-American artist Salman Toor. It is a verse adaptation of the medieval Bengali tale about the Sundarbans Forest goddess, Bon Bibi. The book was first published on 12 February 2021 by Fourth Estate India and then in Great Britain on 11 November 2021 by John Murray Press. It is Ghosh's first book in verse. The story explores themes of greed and ecological misadventure. (1,3) Ghosh states that the story is an allegory for human caused climate change.
