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History of Tiger Conservation in Nepal
Tigers were once distributed throughout the lowland Terai and the adjoining foothills of the country. After the collapse of the Rana regime in 1950s and the eradication of malaria during the mid-1950s, Chitwan opened to outsiders. Thousands of people can down from the mid-hills and large swathes of wildlife habitat were cleared for human settlements, agriculture and other development activities. Uncontrolled hunting of wild animals occurred until the mammalian species including tiger and rhino were nearly exterminated from the area. Swamp deer, one of tiger's major prey species, disappeared from Chitwan by early 1970s. Significant decrease in tiger population was noticed during 1960s and 1970s.
Based on recommendation of these studies, the park boundaries were extended in 1977 to present size of 932 sq km. Furthermore as an extension to CNP, the Parsa Wildlife Reserve was gazetted in 1976 as an extension of CNP as an approach to maintain the continuity of habitats based on the ecosystem management approach. Beside these, other significant works of the period were Operation Tiger and Tiger Conservation Project. Research and Monitoring Unit has been established to monitor tigers and their prey species in TAL.
Together with the loss of their habitat, tiger numbers have also been tremendously reduced. In the early 1900s, there were around 100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, just in one century, the estimated tiger population in the wild has been declined to as few as 3,200 globally whereas in Nepal alone there are 198 tigers as per the survey conducted in the year 2013 marking an increment in the population by 63% from the last survey in 2009
Since 1998, tigers have lost 40 percent of their habitat. At present they occupy only about seven percent of their former range and are confined only in South and Southeast Asia, China and the Russian Far East. They are now found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam.
Tigers were once distributed throughout the lowland Terai and the adjoining foothills of the country. After the collapse of the Rana regime in 1950s and the eradication of malaria during the mid-1950s, Chitwan opened to outsiders. Thousands of people can down from the mid-hills and large swathes of wildlife habitat were cleared for human settlements, agriculture and other development activities. Uncontrolled hunting of wild animals occurred until the mammalian species including tiger and rhino were nearly exterminated from the area. Swamp deer, one of tiger's major prey species, disappeared from Chitwan by early 1970s. Significant decrease in tiger population was noticed during 1960s and 1970s.
In 1964, the late King Mahendra declared the southern part of Chitwan valley as Mahendra Mriga Kunj. Later in 1973, National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 2029 was enacted and Chitwan National Park was declared. Parallel to the establishment of CNP, the Tiger Ecology Project was initiated in the early 1970's as a joint venture of the government of Nepal , the Smithsonian Institution, and World Wildlife Fund to conduct research on the tiger and its prey species.
Based on recommendation of these studies, the park boundaries were extended in 1977 to present size of 932 sq km. Furthermore as an extension to CNP, the Parsa Wildlife Reserve was gazetted in 1976 as an extension of CNP as an approach to maintain the continuity of habitats based on the ecosystem management approach. Beside these, other significant works of the period were Operation Tiger and Tiger Conservation Project. Research and Monitoring Unit has been established to monitor tigers and their prey species in TAL.
Together with the loss of their habitat, tiger numbers have also been tremendously reduced. In the early 1900s, there were around 100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, just in one century, the estimated tiger population in the wild has been declined to as few as 3,200 globally whereas in Nepal alone there are 198 tigers as per the survey conducted in the year 2013 marking an increment in the population by 63% from the last survey in 2009
Tigers were once distributed throughout the lowland Terai and the adjoining foothills of the country. After the collapse of the Rana regime in 1950s and the eradication of malaria during the mid-1950s, Chitwan opened to outsiders. Thousands of people can down from the mid-hills and large swathes of wildlife habitat were cleared for human settlements, agriculture and other development activities. Uncontrolled hunting of wild animals occurred until the mammalian species including tiger and rhino were nearly exterminated from the area. Swamp deer, one of tiger's major prey species, disappeared from Chitwan by early 1970s. Significant decrease in tiger population was noticed during 1960s and 1970s.
In 1964, the late King Mahendra declared the southern part of Chitwan valley as Mahendra Mriga Kunj. Later in 1973, National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 2029 was enacted and Chitwan National Park was declared. Parallel to the establishment of CNP, the Tiger Ecology Project was initiated in the early 1970's as a joint venture of the government of Nepal , the Smithsonian Institution, and World Wildlife Fund to conduct research on the tiger and its prey species.
Based on recommendation of these studies, the park boundaries were extended in 1977 to present size of 932 sq km. Furthermore as an extension to CNP, the Parsa Wildlife Reserve was gazetted in 1976 as an extension of CNP as an approach to maintain the continuity of habitats based on the ecosystem management approach. Beside these, other significant works of the period were Operation Tiger and Tiger Conservation Project. Research and Monitoring Unit has been established to monitor tigers and their prey species in TAL.
Together with the loss of their habitat, tiger numbers have also been tremendously reduced. In the early 1900s, there were around 100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, just in one century, the estimated tiger population in the wild has been declined to as few as 3,200 globally whereas in Nepal alone there are 198 tigers as per the survey conducted in the year 2013 marking an increment in the population by 63% from the last survey in 2009
Since 1998, tigers have lost 40 percent of their habitat. At present they occupy only about seven percent of their former range and are confined only in South and Southeast Asia, China and the Russian Far East. They are now found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand, Vietnam.
Tigers were once distributed throughout the lowland Terai and the adjoining foothills of the country. After the collapse of the Rana regime in 1950s and the eradication of malaria during the mid-1950s, Chitwan opened to outsiders. Thousands of people can down from the mid-hills and large swathes of wildlife habitat were cleared for human settlements, agriculture and other development activities. Uncontrolled hunting of wild animals occurred until the mammalian species including tiger and rhino were nearly exterminated from the area. Swamp deer, one of tiger's major prey species, disappeared from Chitwan by early 1970s. Significant decrease in tiger population was noticed during 1960s and 1970s.
In 1964, the late King Mahendra declared the southern part of Chitwan valley as Mahendra Mriga Kunj. Later in 1973, National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 2029 was enacted and Chitwan National Park was declared. Parallel to the establishment of CNP, the Tiger Ecology Project was initiated in the early 1970's as a joint venture of the government of Nepal , the Smithsonian Institution, and World Wildlife Fund to conduct research on the tiger and its prey species.
Based on recommendation of these studies, the park boundaries were extended in 1977 to present size of 932 sq km. Furthermore as an extension to CNP, the Parsa Wildlife Reserve was gazetted in 1976 as an extension of CNP as an approach to maintain the continuity of habitats based on the ecosystem management approach. Beside these, other significant works of the period were Operation Tiger and Tiger Conservation Project. Research and Monitoring Unit has been established to monitor tigers and their prey species in TAL.
Together with the loss of their habitat, tiger numbers have also been tremendously reduced. In the early 1900s, there were around 100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, just in one century, the estimated tiger population in the wild has been declined to as few as 3,200 globally whereas in Nepal alone there are 198 tigers as per the survey conducted in the year 2013 marking an increment in the population by 63% from the last survey in 2009
Tigers were once distributed throughout the lowland Terai and the adjoining foothills of the country. After the collapse of the Rana regime in 1950s and the eradication of malaria during the mid-1950s, Chitwan opened to outsiders. Thousands of people can down from the mid-hills and large swathes of wildlife habitat were cleared for human settlements, agriculture and other development activities. Uncontrolled hunting of wild animals occurred until the mammalian species including tiger and rhino were nearly exterminated from the area. Swamp deer, one of tiger's major prey species, disappeared from Chitwan by early 1970s. Significant decrease in tiger population was noticed during 1960s and 1970s.
In 1964, the late King Mahendra declared the southern part of Chitwan valley as Mahendra Mriga Kunj. Later in 1973, National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 2029 was enacted and Chitwan National Park was declared. Parallel to the establishment of CNP, the Tiger Ecology Project was initiated in the early 1970's as a joint venture of the government of Nepal , the Smithsonian Institution, and World Wildlife Fund to conduct research on the tiger and its prey species.
Based on recommendation of these studies, the park boundaries were extended in 1977 to present size of 932 sq km. Furthermore as an extension to CNP, the Parsa Wildlife Reserve was gazetted in 1976 as an extension of CNP as an approach to maintain the continuity of habitats based on the ecosystem management approach. Beside these, other significant works of the period were Operation Tiger and Tiger Conservation Project. Research and Monitoring Unit has been established to monitor tigers and their prey species in TAL.
Together with the loss of their habitat, tiger numbers have also been tremendously reduced. In the early 1900s, there were around 100,000 tigers throughout their range. Today, just in one century, the estimated tiger population in the wild has been declined to as few as 3,200 globally whereas in Nepal alone there are 198 tigers as per the survey conducted in the year 2013 marking an increment in the population by 63% from the last survey in 2009
Doubling tiger population
The wild tiger population in the world has declined by more than 98% in the past 200 years; the present tiger population of 3,643 is only 5% of the population a century ago. Concerned by this sharp decline of an iconic animal of the Asian tropical forests, the heads of government of 13 tiger range countries conferred at the International Tiger Forum in St Petersburg, Russia in 2010. In the meeting they expressed a written commitment to double the wild tiger population by 2022 in an attempt to protect this endangered species from extinction.
A research article published in Nepal's forestry journal Banko Janakari, available on the NepJOL platform supported by INASP, shows that Nepal is on track to achieve the target of doubling its tiger population by 2022. Nepal had only 121 tigers when it signed the 'St. Petersburg Declaration on Tiger Conservation' in 2010, according to Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation. The 2013 Tiger Census, released in 2014, estimated that the tiger population was 198 in 2013.
"We carried out our research in Bardia National Park (BNP), Nepal's second largest tiger habitat. It is interesting and good news that the tiger population in this national park increased from 18 in 2009 to 50 in 2013. While the growth of the tiger population in Bardia was one of the highest in the country, the tiger population has also increased significantly in other tiger habitats of the country," says Dr Jhamak Bahadur Karki, lead author of the research article and Associate Professor of Kathmandu Forestry College (KAFCOL), Kathmandu.
"Habitat management such as maintenance of wetlands and grasslands, which in turn help in maintaining a viable prey population, along with security to control poaching of wild animals are the key aspects of tiger conservation," says Dr Karki.
The research article titled "Estimating tiger and its prey abundance in Bardia National Park, Nepal" describes the camera trapping method used to estimate tiger population, and the distance sampling method with line transacts used to estimate prey population, in Bardia National Park in 2008 and 2009, and analyses relation between prey abundance and tiger population.
"This was the first time that camera trap survey was used on a nationwide scale in Nepal to estimate tiger numbers. Camera trap survey is considered as the most accurate among the technologies available in Nepal for tiger counting," says Dr Karki. "The survey, carried out [in 2008] by placing camera traps in 197 locations for a period of 15 days over an area of 1456 square kilometers, found the tiger density to be 0.94 per 100 square kilometers,
The tiger density increased significantly to 3.38 per 100 square kilometres in the 2013 tiger census. Average prey density was found to be 56.3 per 100 square kilometres with varying distribution in various parts of the national park. Chital, sambar, swamp deer, wild pig, hog deer and barking deer are the major prey species available in the Bardia National Park. Considering the average consumption of 50 ungulates (prey animals) per year per tiger, the study suggests that Bardia National Park has ample prey species to support a larger population of up to 100 tigers.
As the distribution of prey species was not uniform, the author recommends the introduction of some large prey animals like wild water buffalo and swamp deer in Babai valley, where the prey density was found to be significantly lower (19.2 animals per square kilometres) than the average density of prey species in Bardia National Park.
"Tiger conservation is very important both from an ecological and a national economic point of view," says Dr Karki. "The tiger is the chief attraction for tourists in Bardia National Park. Tourist numbers can be increased and national economy supported if the tiger population is increased."
The research article was co-authored by Y. V. Jhala, B. Pandav, S. R. Jnawali, R. Shrestha, K. Thapa, G. Thapa, N. M. B. Pradhan, B. R. Lamichane and S. M. Barber-Meyer based on the national tiger survey carried out by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation of the Government of Nepal in 2008 and 2009.
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