LATABEKI, Bangladesh, 15 September 2003 — Forest ranger Haider Ali began his daily patrol after evening prayers as his colleagues relaxed at the end of another day. Not long afterward, he was dragged screaming into the heart of the world’s biggest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans.

Ali, whose half-eaten body was found the following day, had become the latest victim in a struggle for survival that is as old as the relationship between man and beast. His death was also a reminder of an enduring fact of life in the Sundarbans that complicates the task of those trying to save the Royal Bengal tiger, Bangladesh’s national symbol.

“A tiger becomes a man-eater in old age when it can no longer run fast enough to catch a deer, wild boar or any other animal,” said Saidur Rahman, a Sundarbans official. “Any time beyond 25 years of age, tigers may lose their claws and teeth, and then they often slip out of forests and attack people and cattle.”

With many Royal Bengals living up to 40 years, the risk is inescapable for the people who live in or by the forest. The Sundarbans, along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, covers nearly 6,000 sq km (2,300 sq miles) of Bangladesh and 4,260 sq km (1,650 sq miles) of India. A profusion of wildlife — spotted deer, boars, monkeys, crocodiles, snakes and hundreds of species of birds — live there, along with the Royal Bengals.

M. Anwarul Islam, Bangladesh’s deputy chief conservator of forests, says the last census in 1994 put the number of tigers in the Bangladeshi part of the Sundarbans at 350, down by 100 from 1990. The last census in the Indian Sundarbans in December 2001, estimated 271 tigers were there.

“Counting the tigers is not an easy task,” said Islam. “We use pug marks to get as close as possible to an exact number but often the reading is not fully accurate.”

For some people, such as Ali and Monu Mullah, getting close has meant too close for comfort. Ali’s death in June was the latest written up in the forest record book. Islam says that every year up to 40 people are killed and scores more injured by the tigers in and near the Sundarbans. The victims are mostly wood cutters, honey collectors, fishermen, and sometimes forest employees.

But for those who survive a close encounter with a tiger, the lure of the forest, coupled with the need to feed the family, is often too strong to resist. “I went back to the forest within months after a tiger had almost killed me,” says Mullah, a 37-year-old fisherman. The tiger bit him on the forehead and ripped away part of his skull. “It could not kill me because when I was young I was ferocious too,” he recalls. “I hit the tiger back with a sharp knife, again and again. It ran away after some time, leaving me in a pool of blood.”

Mullah was rescued by fellow fishermen and taken home, but he could not stay there for long. “After I got back on my feet, I and my son went back to fishing in the forest,” he says. “I was driven partly by the need for food for my family and partly by a kind of addiction I developed for the Sundarbans since my early days.”

Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia believes the Sundarbans, one of the world’s biggest national parks, has the potential to suck in eco-tourist dollars. “This is a heavenly gift to us and we must preserve and develop it into one of the best tourist spots on earth,” she said this month.

But while tigers are the main draw, only a handful of lucky tourists are able to see them in their natural habitat. Islam says numbers are declining because of poaching and because angry villagers sometimes turn on the man-eaters with spears and guns.

Tiger skins fetch thousands of dollars in east Asian countries, where tiger bones are used to make traditional aphrodisiacs. Islam says poaching has declined since the world cultural body UNESCO declared the Sundarbans, an area criss-crossed by creeks and tributaries, a World Heritage site in 1997. But he says Bangladesh needs to carry out another census to determine how many tigers are left. Atanu Kumar Raha, chief conservator of forests for India’s West Bengal state, agrees. He said in July India and Bangladesh had proposed a joint census to get a more accurate estimate.