A Tiger Without Enemies

Bengal’s fishing cat and its habitat in the wetlands are endangered. Activists sing of their symbiotic beauty.

- Dola Mitra in Calcutta

HOOGHLY district, West Bengal. Evening is descending over a large marshy lake that stretches from the edge of a cluster of villages for a few square kilometres to the opposite bank, over­ grown in this rainy season with a coarse grass called hogla. This indigenous plant once covered the district, giving it its name. And the thickets it formed was the natural habitat of a wild feline, the ‘fishing cat’, now on the verge of extinction.

Though not known to attack humans, this less celebrated cousin of the redoubtable Royal Bengal Tiger clearly inspired enough awe for locals to refer to it as a ‘tiger’—from the commonest maach baagha (literally, ‘fishing tiger’) to the rarer baaghrol. Yet, over generations, it lost ground—poached, hacked to death, chased out, their habitats encr­oached upon and destroyed through unchecked, aggressive industrialisation. Since the past decade, this species, of the Prionailurus viverrinus genus, which does not have any predatory enemies in nature, has been designated ‘vulnerable’ by inter­ national wildlife conservationists IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature).

The locals, however, are sworn enemies. “I have encountered many, as most villagers from these parts do,” a fisherman declares. “I try to kill them. I have stabbed one to death using the sharp end of my fishing hook.” Another villager speaks of its‘evilness’. He says, “They roam the earth in the dead of night.” Villagers claim that they have to stay awake to keep vigil against the night prowler.