- Nepal has proposed a 50-hectare tiger park near Chitwan National Park to house “problem” tigers in semi-natural enclosures and fund their upkeep through tourism.
- Rising tiger populations and increasing human-tiger encounters have led to fatalities, costly captivity, and overcrowded, often inadequate holding centers.
- Research shows only a small fraction of tigers cause conflicts, typically injured or old individuals, while most rely on wild prey.
- Critics warn the park may be ethically flawed, financially unstable, and ecologically ineffective, and have suggested alternatives like better conflict management, improved identification protocols, or even euthanasia of high-risk tigers.
BARDIYA, Nepal — The Nepali government recently proposed establishing a tiger park for the big cats that come into conflict with humans, as the country continues to grapple with an unintended consequence of its hugely successful conservation efforts.
Authorities say the proposed 50-hectare (124-acre) park in the Durganar–Tikauli forest near Chitwan National Park will take in “problem” tigers (involved in killing and eating one or more humans) from overcrowded holding centers, though several questions related to the plan remain unanswered.
“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. “Similarly, many tourists visit national parks to see tigers, but only a few are lucky to do so.”
According to Acharya, the park would feature a fenced habitat designed to hold tigers that have attacked humans. Instead of living in tiny, cramped cages in holding centers, each tiger would get outdoor space to roam, hide in tall grass, and live more naturally. The park would sell tickets for viewing the tigers, and the revenue generated would cover the costs of the tigers’ food and veterinary care.
Nepal, which had 121 tigers (Panthera tigris) in 2009, is now home to 355 of the endangered big cats, spread across major habitats such as Chitwan, Bardiya and Shuklaphanta national parks, according to the latest census, from 2022. Tiger sightings have also been reported in hilly areas and regions east of the Kosi River where they hadn’t been observed before, as their population expands.
Never have so many tigers been recorded living alongside so many people in Nepal, as populations of both the cats and humans thrive. Historically, human settlements were rare in the country’s southern plains, the tigers’ core habitat, except for those of local Indigenous communities. This was due to the prevalence of diseases such as malaria in this lowland region, and also meant that Bengal tigers roamed the area in large numbers. But with the eradication of malaria in the 1960s, people from Nepal’s hill country migrated to the fertile floodplains, establishing farms. The combination of habitat loss and increased poaching for its body parts meant the tiger population fell sharply over the past century, until fresh initiatives were launched in 2010 to save the animal.
According to government records, 38 people died in tiger attacks in Nepal between 2019 and 2023. The latest government data show six people were killed and eight others seriously injured between mid-July 2023 and mid-July 2024 (Nepal’s 2023-2024 financial year). Authorities have captured 15 tigers in connection with those attacks and moved them into temporary holding centers: five in Bardiya, four in Chitwan, four at Kathmandu’s Central Zoo, and one each in Parsa and Shuklaphanta.
Life in captivity has also taken a toll on the tigers. In March 2023, three captive tigers died in Parsa due to inappropriate living conditions. A tiger exhibition center at Chitwan that opened to visitors faced criticism for confining the animals to a limited space for the sake of tourism.
Authorities and researchers have acknowledged the problem and proposed various solutions over the years, but the latest plan is the first time the idea of a tiger park has been aired. Nepal’s 2023-2032 Tiger Conservation Action Plan proposes a range of measures, such as improving livestock management practices, providing compensation and insurance schemes for victims of tiger attacks, enhancing community awareness and participation, establishing rapid response teams and conflict mitigation units, and developing site-specific action plans based on scientific data and local knowledge. It also calls for the establishment of holding centers, but doesn’t discuss a controversial proposal, quickly walked back, to allow “sport hunting” or the establishment of a tiger park.
What research suggests
A 2017 study led by researcher Babu Ram Lamichhane found that transient tigers or those that are injured are more likely to come into conflict with humans: as they struggle to hunt natural prey, they tend to move closer to villages in search of easier food such as livestock. To reduce such conflicts, the study recommends creating an early-warning system that involves regularly monitoring tiger movements and quickly identifying “problem” tigers. Once identified, authorities can take action, such as removing the tiger from the area or encouraging local people to adapt, such as by improving protection for their livestock or avoiding risky areas. The study also found that fewer than 5% of the tigers recorded by camera traps were involved in conflicts, showing that most of the big cats don’t pose a threat to humans.
Similarly, a recent study led by Acharya found that tigers in Chitwan and its buffer zone mainly eat wild prey, with no evidence they were preying on livestock in the area. Even though conflicts with humans do happen, these are caused by only a small number of tigers, as the majority depend on wild food sources.
Another recent study presents 10 strategies for improving tiger management in Nepal by balancing conservation goals with human needs and reducing conflict. It combines scientific approaches such as research and habitat restoration with social measures such as education, livelihood support, and ecotourism to improve local attitudes and provide economic benefits. It also calls for stronger international cooperation, including the use of tigers as “eco-ambassadors” to raise awareness and support for biodiversity conservation. In addition, it explores more controversial options like regulated wildlife farming and controlled hunting as possible tools for generating revenue and managing tiger populations.
Problem identifying ‘problem’ tigers
Identifying “problem” tigers has been a challenge for wildlife officials in Nepal. Even with camera traps and GPS monitoring near human settlements, it’s difficult to confirm which individual cat is responsible for attacks, since tigers move widely and incidents are rarely directly observed. In practice, decisions are often based on indirect signs such as age, injury, proximity to villages, or repeated sightings, which can lead to misidentification. Under public pressure after attacks, authorities rush to label and remove tigers that may not even be responsible.
The unknowns
Critics of the proposed tiger park say the core issue is not enclosure size or funding models, but the principle itself. Whether in a small holding cage, a zoo enclosure, or a fenced safari park, the result remains the same: that a tiger is removed from its natural ecosystem and placed under permanent human control, said Lamichhane, the researcher. As interactions between individual tigers are unpredictable, they need to be separated from one another, he added. This means none of the tigers in the park will have access to the entire area of the park.
Then there’s the funding issue, said Hari Sharma, a zoology professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. The park is expected to be self-financing through tourism receipts. But this, he said, this assumes stable visitor numbers, political stability, and uninterrupted park access — assumptions that proved unreliable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Any decline in tourism due to future pandemics, economic downturns or security issues could quickly destabilize the funding model and push costs back onto the state, Sharma said.
“We saw that during the COVID period, even the zoo in Kathmandu couldn’t feed its tigers due to lack of ticket money,” he said.
There’s also the threat of disease spread. In February this year, 72 tigers died in less than two weeks at a single tiger park in Thailand where visitors were allowed to touch and interact with the tigers, according to the BBC, a U.K. state media outlet.
White elephant
Critics of Nepal’s proposed tiger park say there’s no truly comparable long-term model for managing semi-captive tiger populations at this scale, and therefore the project carries the risk of becoming a white elephant: a costly project that’s difficult to sustain, uncertain in conservation value, and reliant on continuous external funding rather than being self-sufficient.
“What if the government invests millions of dollars for the park, but the tigers don’t survive?” said a national park official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Then who will be held responsible for it?”
Alternatives
Alternatives to long-term captivity or fence-based tiger parks also include more direct and controversial approaches to dealing with high-risk animals. But Nepal’s track record in conservation shows some direction, conservationists say. In May 2017, officials incinerated more than 4,000 wildlife parts seized from trafficking, including 357 rhino horns and 67 tiger skins, to demonstrate zero tolerance for poaching and that wildlife parts shouldn’t have any economic value.
That has inspired calls for the same approach to dealing with “problem” tigers: At a conference in Kathmandu on Oct. 11, 2023 Prof Herbert Prins from the University of Wageningen proposed culling of the animals and burying them in unmarked graves to prevent anyone making money from them. Prins talked about a pro-active approach to protected area management and its tools such as mowing and fertilizing of grasslands and re-introduction of certain game species such as arna (Bubalus arnee) and gaur (Bos guarus). Culling of problem tigers could also be one of the tools, even as “conservationists may not feel good about it”, he added.
Although section 10 of the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act allows for euthanizing ‘man-eater’ tigers, a recent study found that the government hasn’t formulated guidelines or protocols to go about it.
Banner image: A tiger in Chitwan National Park. Image by Gurung pratap via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Photos: The volunteers standing guard at one of Nepal’s human-wildlife frontiers
Citations:
Acharya, H. B., Bertola, L. D., Neupane, D., Lamichhane, B. R., Leirs, H., Manandhar, P., & de Iongh, H. H. (2026). Diet and prey preference of tigers (Panthera tigris) in and around Chitwan National Park, Nepal. Ecology and Evolution, 16(4). doi:10.1002/ece3.73409
Kadariya, R., K. C., R. B., Thapa, S. K., Paudel, U., Shrestha, B. P., Thapa, A., Tumbahangphe, A., & Subedi, N. (2025). Using camera traps to identify and help manage problematic tigers in Nepal. CATnews, 82, 16–19.
Lamichhane, B. R., Persoon, G. A., Leirs, H., Musters, C. J. M., Subedi, N., Gairhe, K. P., … de Iongh, H. H. (2017). Are conflict-causing tigers different? Another perspective for understanding human-tiger conflict in Chitwan National Park, Nepal. Global Ecology and Conservation, 11, 177-187. doi:10.1016/j.gecco.2017.06.003
Pandey, H. P., Apan, A., & Maraseni, T. N. (2026). Assessing the aftermath of tripling the tigers’ population in Nepal: Socio-economic and eco-environmental sustainability perspectives. Biodiversity and Conservation, 35(3). doi:10.1007/s10531-026-03301-3
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