Tiger attacks on the rise in India's coal-rich region
CBC
Raghunath Surtikar is at pains to describe what flashed through his mind when he saw a Bengal tiger casually walking toward him, as he was grazing his cattle, steps from his village in the Chandrapur region of India.
"I couldn't comprehend. It came directly toward me," he told CBC News, while at a local hospital for treatment. "I was petrified.
"My first thought was: 'Either eat me or leave me.'"
The encounter left Surtikar, 48, with a deep gash on his head and another on his right hand, which he had instinctively raised to fend off the tiger. "Otherwise, I would not have survived," he said.
Surtikar is lucky to be alive. Every year, between 30 and 40 people are killed by tigers in the Chandrapur region, located in India's Maharashtra state — a problem that's intensifying as the tiger population explodes.
Chandrapur is home to the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve — one of 50 such wildlife sanctuaries in India — where rigorous conservation efforts have seen the number of tigers double in the last five years.
That sharp increase in the tiger population has forced the territorial animal to settle outside the confines of the reserve, in whatever vegetation it can find, as cubs mark their own territory.
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