Habitat loss fuels rabid jackal attacks in Bangladesh

DAKAR: Few residents of the Jahan family's isolated Bangladeshi village had seen a jackal up close before the morning when it stalked Musqan through the rice fields, pounced on her and mauled the four-year-old for life.

Violent and unprovoked attacks by rabid dogs are increasing in the South Asian country due to widespread deforestation and habitat loss, a trend that experts say has been made worse by climate change.

Musqan is still recovering from the horrific injuries she suffered when the rabid jackal mauled her last month. Although she no longer has rabies thanks to rapid treatment, her face is disfigured by bites and one of her eyes remains swollen and closed.

It happened in broad daylight, his aunt Ishrat Jahan told AFP.

A jackal pushed her to the ground and bit her blindly. Other villagers later killed him, but they are still traumatized by what happened.

Golden jackals like the one that mauled Musqan are slender, wolf-like creatures found throughout Bangladesh, about the same size as a greyhound but lighter.

What made Musqan's attack unusual was when she was bitten during the day, but golden jackals are a nocturnal species.

Zoheb Mahmud, an animal researcher at the Independent University of Dhaka, told AFP that his studies of golden jackals over eight years showed that gradual habitat erosion had changed their behavior.

I discovered that the once shy creatures had started looking at us, he said. They are supposed to come out in the evening or night, but we have seen them during the day.

Urbanization and logging have led to major human encroachment on the habitats where a large portion of Bangladesh's jackal population resides.

According to the monitoring group Global Forest Watch, Bangladesh lost 17,800 hectares (44,000 acres) of forest cover last year, an area about three times the size of Manhattan.

Mahmud warned that jackal attacks on humans would not stop if habitat loss continued.

Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, and there are signs that more extreme weather makes attacks more likely.

The country experienced widespread flooding in September that displaced millions of people in the worst-hit areas for the second year in a row, as floodwaters poured through forests and chased away their canine inhabitants.

Because of the flood, the jackals lost their homes and their food, Obaidul Islam, victim of a jackal bite, told AFP from Nilphamari, in the north of the country.

So they came and bit more than a dozen people in our village.

Rakibul Hasan Mukul, executive director of civil society group Arannayk, told AFP that climate change was causing more extreme and frequent flooding in Bangladesh.

He said climate change was also eroding agricultural lands, displacing their residents and prompting them to cut down more forests.

Land loss has also led to increased human-wildlife conflicts, he added.

People cut bushes around wetlands and their farms to cultivate. As a result, small mammals are in crisis and losing their habitat.

Although Bangladesh's health ministry does not keep specific records of jackal bites, hospital reports indicate an alarming and perhaps unprecedented frequency of attacks this year.

The hospital in Munshiganj district, south of Dhaka, treated 20 people for bites in a single day in September.

I have never seen so many people come in with jackal bites in a single day, hospital director Dewan Nizam Uddin Ahmed told AFP.

Another hospital administrator in Dinajpur, on the other side of the country, told AFP there had been 12 cases in one day at his facility.

We regularly receive bitten patients, said Dinajpur hospital director Mohammad Fazlur Rahman. Jackals roam freely in farmlands.

Golden jackals are by nature shy and generally avoid human contact unless they contract rabies, a disease that quickly makes them bold and aggressive as its symptoms take hold.

Endemic to Bangladesh, rabies spreads rapidly among canine species when infected animals bite and draw blood from other creatures.

The disease is almost certain to cause a prolonged and painful death in humans once symptoms appear. Rapid intervention is needed to stop the disease in its tracks. AFP

After Musqan was bitten last month, she received treatment for three days to prevent rabies infection, followed by a month in hospital for surgeries related to her injuries, and she is still deeply traumatized by the attack.

We can prevent rabies with vaccines, Ariful Bashar, one of the doctors at the hospital treating Musqan, told AFP.

But most of the time, jackals tear off the flesh, thereby deforming their victims. Almost all then need reconstructive surgery. AFP