Tiger Habitat Occupancy in Chitwan–Parsa Complex: Implications for Human–Tiger Conflict Management Strategies

The rebound of tiger populations in Nepal over the last decade has renewed hope for species conservation but also heightened the risk of conflict where humans and tigers coexist. Most of these tigers inhabit Chitwan-Parsa Complex (CPC), which includes core areas prohibiting humans and buffer zones allowing limited activities. To understand distribution within CPC and nearby forests, we constructed a Bayesian occupancy model using data from a sign survey conducted between December 2021 and February 2022. We estimated occupancy for 2021-22 dry-season within CPC on a 10 km × 10 km gird and as well as the use by tigers and prey on a 2 km × 2 km subgrid. The average estimated occupancy <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>ψ</mml:mi></mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> within 10 km × 10 km grids and detection <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mi>p</mml:mi></mml:mrow> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> within 2 km × 2 km subgrids were 0.90 (95% CI 0.77-0.99) and 0.34 (95% CI 0.32-0.36), respectively. The presence of tigers was more strongly related to prey occupancy at the home-range scale whereas factors such as vegetation, human population density (HPD), and elevation affected used portion of home range. HPD significantly reduced habitat use by tigers and prey. We compare our modeled tiger-use distribution to an independent dataset containing conflict causing tiger rescue and relocation records. Tigers use only increased odds of rescues occurring in a subgrid by 10%, but subgrids with above average HPD had 2.2 times higher odds of rescues than those with low HPD, and the grids with above average prey use had 3.8 times higher odds of rescues than those with low prey. The pattern of increased rescues in high-prey-use areas was driven by subgrids with above average HPD, where the odds of rescues were 10.98 times higher than those with low prey use. The varying odds of conflict by HPD and prey use suggest future approaches to tiger conservation and conflict resolution.