ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Conserv. Sci.
Sec. Human-Wildlife Interactions
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2025.1623056
Claws and Consequences: Human-Tiger Conflict and Community Responses in Bardia National Park, Nepal
Provisionally accepted
- 1Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Evenstad Campus, Evenstad, Norway
- 2National Trust for Nature Conservation, Lalitpur, Nepal
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Human-tiger conflict (HTC) is one of the rising issues of Bardia National Park (BNP) and is receiving attention from conservation biologists. This study emphasizes the extent of human-tiger conflict in two municipalities, Thakurbaba and Madhuban, in the buffer zone of Bardia National Park, Nepal. Primary and secondary information was collected to determine the socio-economic characteristics relevant to tiger conservation following a questionnaire survey of the community people. A semi-structured questionnaire was randomly conducted to 438 households to generate information from the respondents along with these people's perceptions towards tiger and their interest in tiger conservation.The Likert scale was used to assess respondents' attitudes, while chi-square test of homogeneity and logistic regression analysis were employed to determine the best-fitting model and identify significant variables influencing perceptions towards tiger conservation. A total of 18 people were killed and 10 were injured by tiger in between 2019 -2023. The people's perception of tigers and their conservation was significantly associated with socioeconomic variables including gender, ethnicity, economic status, and source of income. We found women, low income and Janajati respondents to likely have negative attitudes towards their conservation. The Likert-scale responses revealed strong overall support for tiger conservation and perceived tourism benefits. Besides the ever-growing human-tiger conflict, people are aware of tiger conservation and suggest that making net wire fences, providing improved sheds for cattle, cattle insurance schemes help to minimize livestock depredation events, and effective training on wildlife monitoring and awareness programs could be one of the best ways to mitigateconflicts between humans and tigers.
Keywords: conservation, Human-tiger conflict, People's perception, socio-economic, Panthera tigris
Received: 05 May 2025; Accepted: 08 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shrestha, Kadariya, Subedi, Paudel and KC. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Rabin Bahadur KC, National Trust for Nature Conservation, Lalitpur, Nepal
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