The Nepal government has proposed the creation of a park to house “problem” tigers – individuals involved in human fatalities.
The big cats would be moved from current overcrowded holding centers to a 50-hectare (124-acre) facility, planned for the Durganar–Tikauli forest near Chitwan National Park, according to authorities, reports Mongabay’s Abhaya Raj Joshi and contributor Mukesh Pokhrel.
Nepal’s tiger conservation has shown success, with the population of endangered Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris) growing from 121 in 2009 to 355 in 2022. However, as the tiger population rises, so do human-tiger conflicts. Between 2019 and 2023, government records show 38 people died in tiger attacks, and 15 tigers were subsequently captured by authorities and placed in temporary holding centers.
“Currently, we need to spend around 1.5 million rupees [about $10,000] annually for each captive tiger even if we feed it minimally,” said Hari Bhadra Acharya, a senior ecologist with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation under the Ministry of Forests and Environment, who chairs the committee that’s exploring the plan.
According to Acharya, the proposed park would be self-financed, using tourism revenue from ticket sales to the park to fund food and veterinary care. This would allow the tigers to live in environments where they can roam and hide in tall grass rather than being confined to “cramped cages,” he added.
Research indicates that only a small fraction of Nepal’s tiger population come into conflict with people. A 2017 study led by Babu Ram Lamichhane found that fewer than 5% of tigers recorded in camera traps were involved in conflicts. These individuals are typically transient tigers without territories or physically impaired animals that struggle to hunt wild prey and instead target easier food sources like livestock near villages.
The plan for the new park has faced significant pushback. Lamichhane argued that whether a tiger is held in a holding center or a larger park, it means tigers are being removed from their natural habitat and kept under permanent human control.
Relying on tourism revenue is also risky, said Hari Sharma, a zoology professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. “We saw that during the COVID period, even the zoo in Kathmandu couldn’t feed its tigers due to lack of ticket money.”
Critics of the proposed tiger park say there’s not really a model to manage semi-captive tigers at this scale, hence the project may become a costly, unsustainable endeavor.
Alternatives to the park include establishing early-warning systems for better monitoring of high-risk tigers or the more controversial idea of culling the “problem” animals. While euthanizing such tigers is permitted under Nepal law, a recent study noted specific government guidelines for the practice have yet to be formulated.
Read the full story by Abhaya Raj Joshi and Mukesh Pokhrel here.
Banner image of a Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris) in India. Nepal is now home to 355 of these big cats. Image by Tisha Mukherjee via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
This story first appeared on Mongabay
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