The Honey Hunters of the Sundarbans

Podcast Transcript

The Sundarbans is the world’s largest mangrove forest and a UNESCO World Heritage site spanning the border of India and Bangladesh.

This landscape is home to nearly ten million people who live alongside some of Earth’s deadliest predators.

Driven by chronic poverty, residents of the region are forced to extreme lengths to survive and are forced to take risks that few others would dare contemplate.

Learn more about the honey hunters of the Sunderbans and one of the world’s most dangerous jobs on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

The Sundarbans are the world’s largest mangrove forest, spanning southern Bangladesh and eastern India, where the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna rivers meet the Bay of Bengal. They are a vast tidal wetland known for dense mangroves, shifting waterways, and some of the world’s deadliest wildlife.

Life in the Sundarbans is challenging. The people who live in the region face significant economic challenges.

Poverty is rampant. Nearly 50% of the people in the region live below the poverty line established by the Indian government, a line that would be far below what is viewed as poverty in the Western world.

More than 20% of the people who live there depend on the forest for their livelihood. This dependence takes many forms.

The forest can provide fuelwood, nypa leaves for weaving, foraging for food, and honey gathering.

The money they make is often immediately used to repay debts or fix aging homes or boats, if they are a fisherman.

Adding to their financial woes are the risks posed by the persistent piracy in the region.

Pirates often extort money from locals and have a disturbing practice of stealing the resources gathered by those who have braved the forests in search of honey or crabs.

Mr. Abdus Salam, a Sundarban gatherer, noted about the pirates, in an interview with the BBC: “If we don’t pay them, they will kill us mercilessly. This job is full of risks.”

The people who brave the region have also had to bear the brunt of modern civilization’s advance. Much of the ecosystem that makes up the Sundarban is under siege, as the region has experienced significant deforestation.

Estimates of forest recession in the region have reached 20% over a decade. The retreat of these forested lands has brought the people of the region much closer to the wildlife that lives there.

As a result, the people who depend on the forest for their livelihood are now working side by side with the predators of the Sundarban.

The region has several dangerous predators that interact with those who use the forest. Animals in the forest’s unique ecosystem include venomous snakes, leopards, and the largest crocodiles in the world. The Sundarban saltwater crocodile routinely reaches 20 feet or 6 meters in length and is an apex predator.

The crocodiles provide formidable resistance to the fishermen who follow the banks of the delta throughout the forest in search of the coveted crabs of the region.

They pose a great risk to the forest’s visitors, as anyone who seeks its treasures is forced to cross small creeks, branches of the river, or walk along its banks.

Data suggests that human-crocodile interactions are highly fatal, with Indian ministries providing data of nearly 10 deaths per year.

However, the most famous resident of the Sundarbans is not the giant crocodiles or the poisonous snakes, but the Royal Bengal Tiger. These magnificent creatures routinely top 550 pounds and are renowned for their speed, grace, and ferocity.

The tigers of this region are adept at tracking and killing deer and are also highly evolved, well-adapted swimmers. These remarkable animals are agile climbers and pose a serious threat to the people living in and around the Sundarbans.

All of this brings me to the main point of this episode, honey.

The forest is home to the world’s most prized natural honey. The Sundarban’s saltwater ecosystem provides a unique form of honey compared to other types.

A quick Google search reveals that honey from the region is sold at prices exceeding $50 a pound or over $100 per kilogram!

The region’s honey hunters, called “mawali,” use ancient practices to gather the precious honey. They begin any search with a prayer to the Hindu Goddess Banbibi, the protector of the forest. The hope is that under her watch, the hunters can ensure a safe journey.

According to Hindu tradition, Banbibi watches over the honey gatherers as she has engaged in battle to subdue the Tiger demon Dakshin Rai.

When they are in the forest, the honey hunters use smoke to neutralize bees as well as their elite climbing skills to get to the hives. Honey from the hives is gathered in bamboo baskets and taken to local merchants.

Unfortunately, the smell of the smoke also has an ancillary effect…it draws in the presence of the Bengal tigers.

Despite their danger, the Mawali are not well compensated. Recent studies indicate that these hunters earn only $70 to $ 80 per year during the three-month gathering season.

This isn’t a whole lot of money considering the dangers that the honey hunters face.

Their greatest danger is, far and away, the Royal Bengal Tiger.

According to the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, “In a good year, only about fifty or so honey gatherers are killed by tigers, but that number can be very much higher when things do not go so well.”

The tigers are protected by the government as an endangered species, their status all the more precarious as the Sundarbans forests have eroded with each passing decade.

The gatherers who take the risk to collect the honey are not protected; their sole protection comes from their ritual worship of the goddess Bonbibi.

Unfortunately, her benevolent nature is not enough to keep everyone safe. A trip into the region is fraught with peril.

The tigers of the Sundarbans are not afraid of humans. They don’t turn and run at their sight of people. It’s quite the opposite in fact.

Tigers are not usually predatory toward humans; however, the Sundarbans forest has experienced an abnormally high death rate.

According to statistics compiled by the Bangladeshi forestry department, tigers have killed nearly 1400 people over the last 63 years, with estimates of 81% of tigers having killed more than one person.

So, what causes this abnormally high tiger death rate in the Ganges delta?

The region has experienced several high-casualty events, primarily typhoons. These cyclones have caused the disappearance of hundreds of people, most recently Cyclone Amphan in the Spring of 2020.

This high casualty event claimed more than 100 lives in the region, some of whom may have died in the forest, leading to the tigers’ scavenging of human flesh.

The amount of prey the tigers have access to has declined, in large part due to deforestation in the region.

Sadly, the impact on tigers when there is a surge in tiger attacks can be catastrophic on the population of the endangered animal.

While statistics are difficult to gather, some estimates point to more than one hundred tiger deaths per year; many likely go unreported.

When tigers kill humans, terrified Sundarbani people often take matters into their own hands and kill the tigers.

Tragically, tigers have posed significant threats to rural populations on other occasions in Indian history.

The tiger-related deaths in the Subdaran are not the worst, but they have the longest history, given the nature of human-tiger relationships in the forest.

The unfortunate record for a bengal tiger feasting on human flesh occurred between 1907 and 1914 in the Champawat region of India, near the border with Nepal.

It was here, during the final period of British imperial control of India, that the Tigress of Champawat, a single tiger, claimed 436 lives.

The first kill was a six-year-old girl, killed while she was cutting back grass near the edge of the village that the tiger would come to terrorize.

Shockingly, or perhaps not shockingly, given the self-interested nature of British colonialism in India, the British colonial administration did not even get involved until the tiger had been responsible for more than 200 deaths.

For a period of more than 7 years, the tigress evaded capture until she was finally felled by British colonial agent Jim Corbett, who had followed a trail of blood from the beast’s final victim, a 16-year-old girl from the region.

Experts in animal behavior have studied this case diligently since the killing began in 1907.

Why would this tiger reverse patterns of behavior and kill human beings? Why would the tiger kill in such stunning volume?

The best answer points to a physical trauma that was discovered in the tiger’s past.

As it turned out, the tiger had likely been shot long before the killing started and had sustained significant dental damage that made it impossible to pursue the tiger’s natural prey: deer and wild boar.

The tiger had several broken teeth, which prevented her from attacking larger prey, forcing them to deviate from the normal pattern of tiger behavior.

Another fundamental reason, which brings us back to the modern day in the Sundarbans, is the encroachment of human populations on animal habitats.

As village life transitioned to a more urban landscape, it brought people into the traditional tiger habitat.

The Paleolithic tradition of hunting and gathering persists in certain groups around the world, even as people in modern times often endure harsh conditions to survive. Nevertheless, the number of hunter-gatherer societies remaining today has significantly declined.

The cultures that draw inspiration and dependence upon honey are even fewer.

Those groups that maintain the tradition draw economic and cultural strength from their work.

In fact, the Hadza people of modern-day Tanzania live as hunter-gatherers and place great emphasis on gathering honey.

Like the honey hunters of the Sundbaran, the Hadza engage in small-scale sale of their honey, often through NGOs to international markets.

Unlike their Sundarban counterparts, the Hadza have not faced the same threats from the lion population surrounding their area.

Lions hunt differently from tigers and live in very different social habitats.

Lions, while formidable, are not nearly as stealthy as tigers, which make an invisible adversary in the mangrove forests.

Unlike the people of the Sunderbans, the Hadza also have a helping hand in their honey hunting in the form of a bird known as the honey guide.

The honey guide, indirectly or, as the Hadza people believe, purposely, leads gatherers to the honey.

Like the people of the Sundarban, the Hazda have a deep relationship with honey, and it is factored into their religious and cultural practices.

The risks of living in close proximity to declining predatory habitats pose a grave threat to the people of the Sunderbans.

Outside observers of life in the Ganges delta note that many of these gatherers bear significant scars and physical deformities from encounters with apex predators in the forests.

As one Sundaraban gatherer said in an interview with the BBC, “If we can get any other work, we will happily do that. If a tiger kills any one of us, we cannot be afraid and stay at home. If we don’t come here, we won’t be able to feed our parents and children. It’s our life.”

So, the next time you complain about having to go to work, just remember those who search for honey in the Sunderbans who have to brave saltwater crocodiles, poisonous vipers, and man-eating tigers just to earn their living.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

Research and writing for this episode were provided by Joel Hermensen.

Today’s review comes from listener Ithomp11 from Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write:

Newest San Antonio Completionist Member
I found this show this year and have enjoyed catching up on the 5 years of episodes you’ve produced. Keep up your incredible and random work so I can continue to annoy my friends and family with my newfound facts.

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