Tiger Widows and Mangrove Forests
Home page image: tiger watercolor, late 19th century Japanese, artist unknown, a fragment remaining of larger painting.
I had to share this story about redemption, tigers and mangroves.
The Sundarbans, a World Heritage site, has the world’s largest mangrove forest. It is in India and Bangladesh and includes West Bengal, home of the Bengal tiger. There are about 213 tigers there. As things get tough for the tigers, men who go to fish in the waterways are sometimes killed by tigers. One estimate is 300 people and 46 tigers have been killed in “human-tiger conflicts” since 2000, mostly men. Hence the “tiger widows” that are created by these deaths.
From the CNN story with great links (and the story has great pictures):
“These women … have traditionally been treated as outcasts and blamed for their husbands’ deaths. They are called “swami khejos”— which translates as “husband eaters” in Bengali — which prevents them from traditional occupations like farming and fishing. The stigma not only leaves women without livelihoods but government aid. Many of the tiger attack deaths result after illegal entry into the forest, so they’re disqualified from financial compensation, leaving them with little to care for themselves and their children…
“Focused on the Jharkhali region of the Sundarbans, along the Matla River, Shahif Ali, a 26-year-old fellow at i-Behind The Ink (IBTI), a social enterprise that runs a youth rewilding program, is leading the effort from the ground. He has brought together tiger widows, along with other local women, to restore 100 hectares of mangrove forests. This week, they are planting more than 100,000 saplings across 40 hectares of coastline…
“Currently, these villages are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges, protected by a single embankment, says Ali. “If the embankment breaks, the entire village can be destroyed: homes, agriculture, lands, everything.”
“Native mangrove saplings that have been grown and cared for by the women over the last six months are planted in front of the embankment, helping to restore the dense forest that was cleared to make way for farms and fishing, and provide an extra defense against the violent cyclones that are becoming more intense and frequent with climate change.
“The forest will also act as a barrier against increasing water salinity caused by flooding, which threatens the health of mangroves, destroys soil and crops, and disrupts fish populations.
“The idea is that with time, fish populations will rebound, providing more food both for humans and tigers, resulting in less human-tiger conflict.
“The mangrove restoration forms part of Conservation International’s larger ‘Mountains to Mangrove’ initiative, which spans the Himalayas to the Sundarbans, aiming to protect and restore 1 million hectares of forest over this area. It has one of the densest human populations of any biodiversity hotspot on Earth, says Malhotra, and is facing huge challenges from climate change and deforestation.
“The 100 hectares of mangrove restoration in the Sundarbans is a tiny proportion of the overall target, but Malhotra hopes the project will scale and provide a blueprint for restoration across the wider area.”
These kinds of initiatives are necessary, even if far from sufficient by themselves, to save us from climate change and other human-caused environmental degradation. We owe to them and ourselves to celebrate any such win-win-win effort. We certainly need some good news, to recognize that there are people, imperfect and limited as they and their efforts may be, walking the earth and living in a way that is at least a baby step towards redemption.