Perhaps the only thing more murderous than the commute in Los Angeles may
be the daily trek that workers in Gosaba, India have to deal with:
Between 150-200 people from Gosaba have been killed going about their daily work — fishing and cutting wood on the edge of the park or gathering honey deep in the jungle.
The impoverished villagers say they have little choice but to risk their lives in order to eke out an existence in a hostile environment ill-suited to farming.
Every year, 20 to 30 people are carried off by tigers in the Sunderbans, home to 270 of the big cats, according to regional forestry department figures.
Such tragedies have earned Gosaba the unfortunate monicker of “island of widows.”
AFP/Yahoo!: Man-eating tigers wreak havoc on India’s island of widows
This problem is talked about in Amitav Ghosh’s novel “The Hungry Tide”.
It’s a difficult situation, because the international wildlife agencies put a lot of pressure on the Bengal government to protect the tigers. But the tigers also live very close to lots and lots of humans. The result is this terrible situation — human rights vs. endangered animal rights.
This may be one of the rare cases where the best solution is to relocate the tigers from their natural habitat.