KATHMANDU, June 23 – Despite experts’ negative prognosis on the future of tigers worldwide, Nepali conservation officials say that there has been an encouraging rise in the population of the Royal Bengal tiger in the protected areas of the Terai in recent years.
The Royal Bengal tiger population in Nepal’s three major tiger habitats – the Greater Chitwan area including Parsa wildlife reserve, Royal Bardia National Park, and Royal Shukla Phanta Wildlife Reserve – in the Terai plains has gone up by as much as 20 per cent in the last four years, according to a recent count.
The count, carried out by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) in conjunction with several non governmental organizations working for nature conservation, suggests that the Bengal tiger population has climbed to 300-plus, up from around 250 in 1995-1996.
According to figures made available by the Department, the Bengal tiger population has now climbed to 60 from about 50 (in ’95-’96) in the Greater Chitwan forests, 40 from 32 in the Bardia forests and 23 from 16 in the woods of the Shukla Phanta reserve.
While the tiger populations were sparsely distributed in Parsa, Chitwan and Bardia parks, the population density was found highest in the far-western Terai reserve of Shukla Phanta – “one tiger per 10-to-12 sq km area”.
The “camera-trap-aided count” was conducted by the Department with financial support from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – Nepal Program, and with technical support from the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation (KMTNC).
“We are pretty sure that more tigers are residing in the lush green forests outside these protected areas mainly in the forests east of Parsa and west of the Bagmati River,” says Dr Tirtha Man Maskey, the Director General at the Department. “Virtually no sign of tiger movement was found in the areas east of the Bagmati.”
The encouraging population growth trend of the highly endangered cat species is in stark contrast to a prognosis of tiger experts from tiger range countries – such as Russia, China, Malaysia, India – who, during the Chinese Year of the Tiger in 1998, suggested a massive decline in the population of the big cats worldwide.
According to them, the tiger population world wide would dwindle to “less than 500” by the next Chinese Year of the Tiger in 2010, when the magnificent `jungle kings’ would be surviving mainly in a “handful of Indian reserves”.
Wildlife experts in Nepal say that the rise in tiger population in Nepal’s parks and reserves does not reflect the status of tigers in the region or the range countries in anyway. “This is just the story of the growth in tiger population in a small patch of forests in the Indian subcontinent,” says Narayan Poudel, the Deputy Director and Ecologist at the Department.
Adds Narendra Babu Pradhan, another Ecologist at the Department, who was also involved in the count, “What is true is the fact that despite the growth tigers are under threat in Nepal like elsewhere. The problems are many: continuing habitat destruction and fragmentation, and decline in prey base due to increasing human persecution, and so on.”
And there are experts who are cynical about the whole story.
“How can they make such tall claims? Where is the scientific data to substantiate the claims?” fumes an independent wildlife biologist with a leading non-governmental organization working in the field of nature conservation.
The Department officials, however, claim that “there is enough scientific data. We also have photographs of every single tiger residing in the three tiger units (habitats).” Adds Dr Chandra Gurung, Country Representative of the WWF-Nepal: “There is no doubt that the tiger population is going up in our Terai forests. And we are already working to prepare a photo album of all the tigers with individual details.”
According to experts over 100,000 tigers belonging to eight subspecies – Royal Bengal, Caspian, Amur, Javan, Bali, Sumatran, South China and Indo-China – roamed the earth at the turn of the last (20th) century. However, this number came down to between 5,200-7,300 at the turn of this (21st) century, which saw the extinction of the two subspecies – Caspian in the 1970s and Bali in the 1940s – and near-extinction of the rest.
While the experts’ prognosis is already gloomy, thanks to rampant deforestation and rising human population, the threat to the tiger’s existence – the animal at the top of food-chain, which is also an indicator of healthy environment – has been exacerbated by unabated poaching. Tigers are killed for bones, claws, pelts and other organs, which are used in making Oriental Chinese Medicines which are consumed by the Chinese communities scattered across the globe.