Pirate's Cove

Well, it was either blaming attacks (which have always happened. Indians have known of this long enough to wear mask on the backs of their heads, so tigers think someone is looking at them) on ‘climate change’, the patriarchy, or white supremacy, which seem to be the usual wells news outlets like Reuters go to

Tigers attack as Indians are forced into forests by climate change

On a warm November afternoon, Parul Haldar balanced precariously on the bow of a small wooden dinghy, pulling in a long net flecked with fish from the swirling brown river.

Just behind her loomed the dense forest of the Sundarbans, where some 10,000 square km of tidal mangroves straddle India’s northeastern coastline and western Bangladesh and open into the Bay of Bengal.

Four years ago, her husband disappeared on a fishing trip deep inside the forest. Two fishermen with him saw his body being dragged into the undergrowth – one of a rising number of humans killed by tigers as they venture into the wild.

Now, this couldn’t possibly be due to the massive and growing population of India, and all these humans encroaching on the tiger’s areas, especially as the tiger population is growing back, right?

That Haldar, a single mother of four, is taking such risks is testament to growing economic and ecological pressures on more than 14 million people living on the Indian and Bangladeshi sides of the low-lying Sundarbans.

They have led to a reduced dependence on agriculture, a rising number of migrant workers and, for those like Haldar who can’t leave the delta to work elsewhere, a reliance on the forests and rivers to survive.

Overpopulation?

And as climate change pushes up sea surface temperatures, the cyclonic storms that barrel in from the Bay of Bengal have become fiercer and more frequent, particularly in the last decade, researchers said.

Ah, finally get a mention of Hotcoldwetdry, with no proof of anthropogenic causation.

According to the Sundarban Tiger Reserve’s director, Tapas Das, five people have been killed by tigers in India’s Sundarbans since April.

Local media, which closely follow such attacks, have reported up to 21 deaths last year, from 13 both in 2018 and 2019. Many attacks are not recorded, as families are reluctant to report them since it is illegal to go far into the forests.

“The number of reported cases of human wildlife conflict and fatalities are certainly alarming,” said Anamitra Anurag Danda, a Senior Visiting Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation think-tank.

A new factor behind the increase has been the coronavirus pandemic, which trapped tens of thousands of people like the Mondal family on the Sundarbans when they would normally be earning money as labourers elsewhere in India.

So, not ‘climate change’? Literally, there is nothing in the few remaining paragraphs that makes any attempt to justify the headline. But, see, that doesn’t matter, because Reuters got the cult propaganda out in the headline. The rule of the Internet is that most people will read for 30 seconds or 3 paragraphs before moving on. People see that headline, read a bit, and are now convinced that it’s your fault that tigers are attacking people in India. Something which has happened for a long, long time.