The Hindu Business Line : The liquid forest & its lesser known denizens

Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, West Bengal It was the early part of an afternoon when our motorised boat puttered along the many water channels towards Sajnekhali in Sunderbans Tiger Reserve, when our boatman, Mahadev Gayan, sighted a fishing cat (Felis viverrina) on the banks plaited with a variety of mangroves. We had a quick look with our binocs as the brown creature backed away before anyone could touch his camera.

“It is a rare sighting” remarked Suchandra Kundu. S.H. Prater writes, “the fishing cat is distinguished from the leopard-cat by its much larger size and shorter tail, which is much less than half the length of its head and body…. It is given to feeding on fish and freshwater molluscs. Its method of fishing is to crouch on a rock or overhanging bank and to scoop up the fish with a blow of its paw. It does not enter the water in pursuit of its prey.”

Over three days of punting around in the rivers, channels and creeks of Sunderbans, which derives its name from the hardly spotted mangrove specie Sundari (Heritiera fomes), we saw over nine crocodiles with most taking the sun on the alluvial banks.

Perhaps, the best sighting was at Choragaji khali, where a 10-ft. crocodile, spread over the roots of a mangrove tree, was absorbing the first rays of the sun.

We moved our boat, driven by Mahadev Gayan and his young smiling assistant, Debabrata, to some 60 ft from the reptile, when it decided to slither away into the waters.

Estuarine or salt-water crocodile (Crocopdylus porosus) is the largest of the present day reptiles, says J.C. Daniel, with a snout bigger than the mugger or marsh crocodile (Crocodylus palustris). Specimens over 15 ft. in length have been obtained in the Sunderbans and in Orissa river estuaries but are now exceedingly rare.

Depending on the fish available, these creatures also take on human beings. “An authentic report states that a crocodile about 5 metres in length, shot in Orissa, had in its stomach the well-preserved body of a man, one leg and the head and arms severed from the body,” mentions Daniel.

But a Royal Bengal Tiger (Panthera tigris tigris), of which little is known, we did not see in Sunderbans, the estuarine end of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers; nor did we sight much of its prey like boars and chitals.

We were seven of us in our white boat with green borders named Joy Ma Kali. They were: Suchandra Kundu and her husband Joydip Kundu; B. Sridhar, a director on board the Bengal Tiger Line (India) Pvt. Ltd and wife Gayathri; M. Balasubramanian, managing partner AVM Film Studios and wife Lalitha; and this writer. The tip of the bow is always covered with a red cloth and Mahadev Gayan requests all not to step on it as the Goddess Kali is supposed to reside there.

Every chilly morning, a barely dressed Debabrata pours a bucket of the sweet-salt water on the bow and puts up the Indian flag; the Indian tricolour is taken down in the evening. In the engine room, there is a picture of Goddess Kali with her great disciples Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his wife, Ma.

Two high and two low tides daily churn the sweet water brought in by the rivers with the salt water flowing in from the Bay of Bengal in the giant mixie that is Sunderbans.

A three-way pact between Bengal Tiger Line, Sanctuary magazine and the Kundus has been drawn up some six months ago to help preserve the tigers in the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve. That is a tough task . The Reserve, created in 1973, was part of the then 24-Parganas Division.

Subsequently, the area comprising the present tiger reserve was labelled as Reserve Forest in 1978, going by details at various e-mail sites. The total area of the Sunderbans is 9,630 sq. km, of which, 4,264 sq. km wears a mangrove skin; the area of the Reserve is 2,585 sq. km spread over a land area of 1,600 sq. km and water body of over 985 sq. km.

Within this area, 1,330.12 sq. km is the core area and declared as the Sunderbans National Park in 1984. A space of 124.40 sq. km in the core is preserved as a primitive zone and acts as a gene pool.

Within the buffer zone, Sajnekhali Wildlife sanctuary was created in 1976 covering 362.335 sq. km. In 1989, the Sunderbans was declared as a Biosphere Reserve.

With the help of our guide Niranjan Raptaan and Anil Mistry of the Wildlife Protection Society of India, we noted pug marks and that is not quite seeing tigers.

Moving around the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve and talking to a few people (including some in Kolkata), one could accept the general belief that the tiger and prey populations are on the dip. Like in every other National Park, the forest department claims a tiger population of over 200 in Sunderbans with a famed research institute questioning the methodology; this writer believes in discounting the estimates by 60 per cent or more.

The Royal Bengal Tiger and the Sunderbans mangrove forests have the quirkiness of a brilliant loner; the mood oscillates between the charming and the scary; the rivers and the seas are tightly held in a clasp by the various mangrove species (nothing else grows); the rays of the early morning and late evening sun, turn sparklers on the water floor; the tourist sometimes flares up seeing a brown-winged kingfisher or a river dolphin (one saw four) and at other times sinks into the monotony of the wide watery spaces; there is something common between the waters of the Sunderbans and the desert sands beyond Jaisalmer; the tiger and his prey, unlike anywhere in India, live in the wetness of the swamps and the salty waters; there are no alarm calls; every move is possibly abrupt, not thought out; little is known of this liquid forest and less of its denizens.

One tiger has been radio collared when the forest department could have collared more numbers to understand its behaviour and reach.

One heard of the forest department turning down the offer of a foreign company to radio collar a sizable part of the population; then one picked up a strong rumour that a saw mill is working in the core area with links to Bangladesh though the sand-alluvial soil terrain could pull down any such enterprise.

After Sariska, the public is prone to believe less in the forest officials.

P. Devarajan

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