Chitwan, March 24: As the tiger population increases in Nepal, its habitat area has to be expanded.
Although the park areas, buffer zones and other forest areas are the habitat of tigers, the problem of shrinking tiger habitat is seen in recent years as the number of tigers has increased.
Speaking at an interaction programme organised by Chitwan National Park here today, Haribhadra Acharya, senior ecologist at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, stressed the need to increase the habitat for tigers.
He said that the number of tigers has been increasing over the last five years indicating to a need to increase the habitat. “There is a need to protect the tigers by keeping them in open zoos,” he said, adding that the open zoos could be linked to income generation.
The number of tigers in Nepal has increased from 121 in 2009 to 355 in 2022. The number of tigers was 198 in 2013 and 253 in 2018.Acharya said that due to the increase in the number of tigers, the habitat area has decreased by 93 per cent.
In recent years, the number of tigers has been increasing in Nepal due to the focus on conservation. Acharya said that forest area in the country can accommodate around 500 tigers. “It seems that 404 tigers can be kept in the core area of the parks,” he added.
According to him, deer species is the main prey of the tiger and there is also a need to protect deer. Similarly, tigers also hunt monkeys and domestic animals for food. He said that there were about 100,000 tigers in the world 100 years ago, but now the number has come down to 5,000.#nepal #Habitat #rss
