Nepal’s leader says it has too many tigers. is this?

Nepal has been hailed globally for tripling its tiger population in a decade – but Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli thinks the country may have been too successful.

“In such a small country, we have over 350 tigers… We can’t have that many tigers and let them eat humans,” he said at an event to review the country’s COP29 results last month. Could.”

According to government data, around 40 people lost their lives and 15 were injured in tiger attacks between 2019 and 2023. But local communities say that this figure is very high.

“For us, 150 tigers are enough,” Oli declared in December, even suggesting that Nepal could send its prized big cats to other countries as gifts.

Experts say there is no single answer to this. Tiger biologist Ullas Karanth says it depends on the availability of prey in a given area – ideally, each tiger should have around 500 prey animals, such as deer, antelope or wild buffalo.

Experts argue that Oli’s concern about limiting the number of tigers is misplaced. Instead, Dr. Karanth says, the Nepal government should “focus on expanding protected areas that have reasonable natural densities of prey and tigers.”

If wildlife is moving out of protected areas in search of prey, it could explain why so many attacks have occurred in places bordering forests, where tigers have always encountered humans.

An example is the “buffer zone” that lies between national parks and human settlements. Wildlife sightings are common here, but locals also use the area to graze cattle and collect fodder and firewood.

Forest corridors – strips of land that connect different parks and bio-reserves that allow wildlife to move between them – have emerged as another flashpoint. Roads sometimes pass through these areas, and local people also use them for foraging, making them vulnerable to attacks.

Zoologist Karan Shah says the increase in human deaths is a sign that Nepal’s once successful conservation model is breaking down.

“So far, (Nepal’s) focus has been on winning international attention, while the impact on communities living around national parks and protected areas has been ignored,” Mr Shah says.

He argues that conservation is not just “an ecological or scientific issue”, but also a social issue – and that loss of human life must be prevented so that local communities remain part of the conservation effort and not against it. Anger is also increasing among the local people because the tigers are hunting the cattle.

Thakur Bhandari, president of the Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal, said, “A large part of our population still lives in rural areas and is dependent on forest resources, which they help to preserve – but now they are increasingly being attacked by tigers. Are being killed and injured.” BBC.

“As forest conservationists we cannot be against wildlife, but that does not mean we should ignore its impact on humans and our society.”

A century ago, about 100,000 tigers roamed Asia – but deforestation and rampant poaching have pushed them to the brink of extinction. There are now only about 5,600 wild tigers left in 13 countries, including Nepal, China, India, Thailand, Indonesia and Russia.

All of these countries had committed to doubling their tiger numbers by 2022, but Nepal was the first to surpass this target – partly due to zero-hunting initiatives and doubling the country’s forest cover between 1992 and 2016. Reasons to do.

Forest corridors created by connecting 16 protected areas in southern Nepal with cross-border areas in northern India also helped.

The increasing number of tiger attacks has now tarnished that achievement.

Oli believes that the tiger population in Nepal is increasing at the cost of human lives. However, achieving a viable solution is not easy.

The Parks and Wildlife Department has taken up the challenge of managing tigers in Nepal, where those killing humans are detected and captured.

“Zoos and rescue centers are already overcrowded with problem tigers,” the department said in a conservation report published in 2023. “There is an urgent need for a comprehensive protocol to deal with the rescue, management and rehabilitation of problem animals.”

Oli has proposed to send Nepal’s tigers abroad.

“People like to keep birds like hawks and peacocks as pets, so why not tigers?” He suggested. “This will also increase his status.”

Others have different views.

Dr Karanth says tigers that have repeatedly killed humans “should be killed immediately”. Some argue that humans have exacerbated the problem by encroaching into tigers’ natural habitats, using land for farming or infrastructure, and reducing the prey-base of big cats.

Meanwhile, the BBC spoke to a wildlife management expert who claims Oli wants to reduce the number of tigers to free up more land to build infrastructure.

“This is not about people’s safety,” he said.

At present the situation is at a standstill. It is unclear whether Oli’s “tiger diplomacy” suggestion will take hold, or whether over-encroaching humans or tigers are to blame for Nepal’s tiger attack crisis.

It’s clear that humans and tigers are struggling to achieve peaceful coexistence in Nepal – and the country’s conservation success story has exposed many of its thorniest problems.