The hunter who became a guardian: Remembering Sitesh Ranjan Deb

When I met Sitesh Ranjan Deb at his modest home in Srimangal in 2010, he was already a legend among Bangladesh's small community of wildlife conservationists. 

At 62, he moved with restless purpose, introducing visitors to injured animals under his care before settling into the story that had come to define his life: how a man born into a family of hunters abandoned the rifle and devoted himself to saving the creatures he once pursued.

Deb died on Tuesday at 78, leaving behind a conservation movement that scarcely existed when he began. Long before wildlife rescue became a recognised field in Bangladesh, he had built one largely on instinct, persistence and personal sacrifice. 

Generations of conservationists now trace their inspiration to him, and many continue the work he started in the forests of greater Sylhet, the Sundarbans and the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

The turning point came in his early 40s.

During an interview for Agence France-Presse, where I worked from 2005 to 2024, Deb recalled setting out one day to hunt deer when he came upon a sleeping Himalayan black bear. Startled, the bear attacked, tearing through his face and leaving him permanently blind in one eye. Emergency surgery saved his life.

The months that followed altered its direction.

Rather than return to hunting, a profession his family had practised for generations, he decided to spend the rest of his life rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife.

"I lost one eye in that attack, but it changed the way I wanted to relate to wildlife," he told me.

The thing that followed was one of the most remarkable second acts in Bangladesh's conservation history.

Deb became the country's first widely recognised private wildlife rescuer, dedicating himself to protecting the shrinking forests around Lawachara National Park near his home. 

Villagers regularly brought him injured birds, snakes, mammals and primates. He treated them, nursed them back to health and, whenever possible, returned them to the wild.

By the time I visited, his small rescue centre had become an unlikely refuge. It housed a rare albino fishing cat, an 18-foot python and two Himalayan black bears, Rambo and Jumbo, whose mother had been killed by villagers. Animals too fragile to survive in the forest remained under his care.

"I can't set the bears free because the jungles are no longer large enough to provide them with food, and there are too many poachers," he said as he sliced pumpkins for their afternoon meal.

His home functioned as an extension of the rescue centre. Jungle cat cubs occupied one room. A baby python was recovering in another. An injured slow loris requiring constant attention was being cared for inside the house.

By his own estimate, he released more than 1,000 wild animals and 2,000 birds during his lifetime.

His work unfolded as Bangladesh's forests were steadily disappearing.

Illegal logging, agricultural expansion and human settlement had already reduced much of the country's natural habitat by the time Deb began rescuing wildlife. 

Lawachara National Park, one of Bangladesh's richest tropical forests, continued to lose habitat to encroachment, tourism and gas exploration, placing increasing pressure on species that had once flourished there.

"Many of the species I grew up with—wild boars, leopards—are hardly ever seen now," he told me. "These animals are in their last days. Illegal logging has damaged the forest so much that there is no food left for them. Unless we act now, they'll be gone forever in a few years."

He believed conservation required public participation as much as veterinary care.

Whenever he released an animal, he invited local politicians, forestry officials, journalists and villagers to watch. The releases became public lessons in conservation, demonstrating that rescue alone was not enough unless people also valued the forests where the animals belonged.

I accompanied him on one such release. Tea estate workers had found an abandoned baby python, which Deb had painstakingly raised before deciding it was ready to return to the wild. 

Carrying the snake into a patch of remaining forest, he placed it gently on the ground and watched as it disappeared into the undergrowth.

Then he turned and offered what, in retrospect, feels like the simplest summary of his life's work.

"To save these valuable gifts of nature, you don't need to look to anyone else for help. You just do it."

Following news of his death, tributes came from across Bangladesh's conservation community.

Tapan Dey, a former chief wildlife conservationist, described Deb as the country's pioneer in wildlife rescue and rehabilitation.

"For more than 40 years, his dedication to wildlife conservation was unmatched," Dey said. "He would rescue an animal, nurse it back to health, and hand it over to the authorities for release. With his passing, we have lost a monumental champion. His care centre was the very first private initiative of its kind in the country."

Deb leaves behind more than rescued animals or a small rehabilitation centre in Srimangal. He leaves an idea that was once uncommon in Bangladesh: that protecting wildlife is not solely the responsibility of governments or forest departments, but of ordinary people willing to act. 

For many who now work in conservation, that idea began with a hunter who put down his gun after a single encounter in the forest and never picked it up again.

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