Living with tigers

Striking a balance between long-term objectives of protected areas and immediate needs of local communities is a challenge

At an international summit in 2010, heads of government from countries where the tiger is found agreed to a "TX2" plan to reverse declines in the big cat's populations and double its numbers in the wild by 2022. On its way to achieve "TX2", Nepal has made a remarkable progress by having 198 tigers in 2013, an increase of 63 percent since 2009.

The 2013 surveys established that tigers are found in 12 of the 14 districts within the Tarai Arc Landscape extending from Parsa Wildlife Reserve in the east to Shuklaphanta Wildlife Reserve in the west. The landscape encompasses six protected areas including three national parks, two wildlife reserves, one conservation area, and their buffer zones, which cover 5,412.62 sq km. Conservation experts credit the increase to effective policing of national parks, strengthened organizational structure and mobilization of greater resources in anti-poaching operations with the use of hi-tech patrolling tools and better management of tiger habitats in Nepal along with improved collaboration with civil society and cross-border coordination.

The Tarai Arc is also home to 7.4 million people out of which 25 percent are still below the poverty line. This scenario adds to the challenge for future conservation under increasing pressure from poorly planned infrastructure development, forest encroachment, human-wildlife conflict and population rise. Among these, human-wildlife conflict raises the question of success and long-term survival of tigers.

The establishment of protected areas is seen as the most feasible strategy to biodiversity conservation where the landmass set aside as parks is regarded as superficial indicator of a nation's political commitment. Accordingly, building a network of protected areas has been the state's main strategy for long-term protection of large mammals such as tigers, rhinos and the biodiversity therein. Along with this, striking a balance between long-term objectives of protected areas and the immediate needs of local communities living around them is one of the most pressing challenges facing biodiversity conservation.

Community-based conservation emerged in an effort to balance conservation and local livelihood needs of surrounding communities. The term theoretically encompasses both the traditional form of protection of parks and modern participatory conservation by advocating a bottom-up approach. The core principle of this approach is to benefit communities. In Nepal, community-based conservation in the form of buffer zones, community forests and conservation areas have become a strategy to address this challenge.

Protected areas affect the local livelihoods and thus whenever they are established or expanded, mechanisms designed to compensate for the loss of local livelihood requirements have provided incentives, in the form of compensation for crop and livestock damage by wildlife or sharing the park revenues with surrounding buffer zone community. But do these incentives adequately compensate for the losses incurred by local populations at community and household level?

Most protected areas are too small to maintain a viable population of larger mammals for long time. Smaller protected areas can result in tigers and large herbivores raiding agricultural fields and human settlements, thus resulting in a fatal retaliation. But surrounding areas such as buffer zones, biological corridors and multiple land-use areas may support these populations for a longer period. Buffer zone management has two major objectives; first is to improve resource conditions within the area to fulfill the increasing resource demands of the communities and second is to improve the ecological conditions within such areas and provide additional habitable areas for wildlife. This increases the possibility of ecotourism in such buffer zones but also puts tigers in direct confrontation with the surrounding human communities.

There has been a rapid increase in the number of humans killed by tigers after the gradual restoration of forest in buffer zones and corridors and this trend is on the rise. Another major concern of smaller protected areas is that corridors are necessary for population exchange among smaller parks. Unlike protected areas, compensation mechanisms are not prompt in areas along the corridors. This raises resentment among local communities and could prove precarious for conservation in long run. At the same time, wildlife outside protected areas is vulnerable to poaching as state control is minimal in such areas.

For species like tigers which are highly sensitive to human disturbances around their habitats, conservation and maintenance of core areas is the only solution to restrict populations within protected areas. Any disturbances in the core areas of tiger habitats can agitate the animal to move into villages. This will instigate retaliation. Thus it is crucial to address the ecological aspects of the habitats for certain species to promote community-based conservation. But still there is an opportunity to manage these areas with wide community participation and enhanced compensation mechanisms.

Biodiversity conservation is complex when human intervention is high. It should be understood that communities are not homogenous. Conservation and management strategies will broadly vary across landscapes and there are no blueprint solutions where one size fits all. Success and failures of a strategy cannot be extrapolated across diverse human communities. Many efforts may have failed but some have succeeded as well. This clearly shows that conservation is possible; the only major factor to take into account being human interactions with biodiversity.

The author holds a degree in Forest and Nature Conservation with specialization in Policy and Society
karnali77@gmail.com