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 kilometers 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 ¡ª one of a rising number of humans killed by tigers as they venture into the wild.