In the Durganar–Tikauli forest near Chitwan National Park, Nepal is plotting a radical experiment: a 50-hectare sanctuary for tigers that have killed people. The proposal marks a turning point in how one nation grapples with the messy collision between conservation success and human safety.
Nepal's tiger recovery is a conservation triumph. The Bengal tiger population has surged from just 121 individuals in 2009 to 355 in 2022—a threefold increase that stands as a genuine win for endangered species protection. Yet this success has created an unexpected crisis. As tiger numbers climb, so do encounters with humans. Between 2019 and 2023, government records show that tigers killed 38 people, prompting authorities to capture and confine 15 of the offending animals in temporary holding centers. Now those tigers are living in what officials describe as cramped cages, a temporary measure that has become unsustainably expensive and ethically troubling.
Hari Bhadra Acharya, a senior ecologist with Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, chairs the committee designing the new facility. He laid out the economic reality plainly: each captive tiger costs the government around 1.5 million rupees—approximately $10,000—annually just to feed and maintain, even on minimal rations. The proposed park would change that equation by becoming self-financing through tourism revenue. Rather than confined to cages, the tigers would roam across grassland where they can hide in tall grass and live something closer to natural conditions, all funded by visitor ticket sales and veterinary fees.
The logic is appealing, but the pushback has been swift and substantial. Babu Ram Lamichhane, who led a 2017 study on Nepal's tigers, argues that the fundamental problem remains unsolved: removing tigers from their natural habitat and placing them under permanent human control, whether in cages or parks, is still captivity. His research found something crucial—fewer than 5 percent of tigers recorded in camera traps were actually involved in conflicts. The "problem" animals tend to be transient tigers without established territories or physically impaired individuals struggling to hunt wild prey, making them turn to easier livestock near villages.
The revenue model itself is fragile, according to critics like Hari Sharma, a zoology professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu. He points to a cautionary tale: during the COVID-19 pandemic, even Kathmandu Zoo couldn't afford to feed its tigers when ticket sales dried up. A large-scale semi-captive tiger facility betting its entire operational budget on consistent tourism income faces similar vulnerability.
Other alternatives exist, though none are politically comfortable. Better early-warning systems could monitor high-risk tigers before conflicts occur. The more controversial option—culling problem animals—is legally permissible under Nepali law, yet the government has not formulated specific guidelines for the practice.
What remains clear is that Nepal must decide: keep problem tigers confined indefinitely at growing expense, attempt a risky new park model, invest in monitoring systems, or consider lethal removal. The country that brought tigers back from the brink of extinction now faces the harder question of what to do when that success creates conflict. The answer will shape not just Nepal's relationship with its tigers, but how conservation is practiced across a warming, crowded world where human and animal space continue to shrink.