Nightmare for tourists as tigress enters lodge

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nightmare for tourists as tigress enters lodge
Monotosh Chakraborty, TNN, Jun 28, 2010, 04.01am IST

GOSABA (SOUTH 24-PARGANAS): They had gone there for a taste of the Sunderbans: mangrove jungles, surging tides and maybe, a whiff of wildlife. When they returned on Sunday, they had lived through a nightmare, their picture postcard holiday marred by a close encounter with the Bengal tiger — right inside the Sajnekhali Tourist Lodge.

Four tourists were at the lodge, a popular haunt of visitors, when a full-grown tigress, reportedly being chased by two tigers in heat, jumped over the boundary fence of the forest department complex twice in the space of 24 hours.

The animal was finally tranquillised on Sunday morning, but not before it had run amok inside the compound, its roars sending the tourists and the handful of forest staffers running for cover. Apart from the lodge, the complex houses a forest office and quarters.

As the tourists stayed trapped, fear of the tigress kept boats away from the Sajnekhali jetty on Saturday. The quartet was sent back on Sunday on a boat that had come with drinking water.

The lodge is currently being renovated and a section of forest officials felt the construction work triggered the breach. According to them, a pile of rubble had been placed just outside the boundary fence. The 9 ft-high barrier is enough to keep tigers out. But the rubble lowered this critical hei-ght, with the tiger climbing atop the rubble heap, before jumping into the compound.

Sunderban Tiger Reser-ve deputy field director Ri-cha Dwibedi said: "It seems to have climbed atop the rubble and leaped inside."

But West Bengal Forest Development Corporation MD PBN Rao claimed he did not know how the breach took place. "I have no information if rubble was kept outside the fence. I'll have to ask my manager at the spot for details."

Link - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/C...ow/6099922.cms

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The reporter appears to have been influenced by the sensationalistic journalism so often evident in vernacular and some 24x7 news channels.

A simple case of a tiger entering into a forest rest house compound is raised as a news. Of course, in Sunderbans there has been conflict between man and tiger, as people enter into the forests for collecting forest produce, human habitations encroaching forest areas, and salinity and lack of prey driving tigers into human habitations. This doesn't make every tiger a maneater. It is the fear that has resulted in people imagining things. A reason has been mentioned ie. two male tigers chasing a tiger in heat, tiger running amok inside the rest house etc. Makes me really wonder, if such misconceptions exist about the tigers, will we be able to preserve them? I think we have to start educating the media first.

Sabyasachi

[Mohan Raj]

I think we have to start educating the media first. - That is a good point.