CHITWAN, July 29

With arrangement of food and habitat at Chitwan National Park, the number of big cats has gone up, while their assault on humans has dropped.

Earlier, tigers used to leave the park and attack livestock and humans for want of food. Of late, attacks on humans at the human settlements, however, have subsided. Tigers had claimed six lives last fiscal. Chief Conservation Officer Kamaljung Kuwar at the park said that tigers had stopped going to nearby human settlements and attacking humans. A tiger had attacked a person sleeping at his house near the community forest of Gitanagar Chitwan National Park two years back. Kuwar said that tigers had not attacked anyone after that. Availability of food in abundance had caused decline in tiger attacks.

Five parks and reserves are home to 198 tigers in Nepal. Of them, Chitwan National Park has 120 big cats. There are 50, 17, four, and seven tigers at Bardiya National Park, Suklaphanta, Banke and Parsa Wildlife Reserve respectively. Wildlife conservationists estimate that tiger population will double by the year 2022. Nepal had agreed to increase the tiger population as per the declaration made by International Tiger Conference held in Bangaladesh in 2010.

Chitwan National Park had only 91 tigers in 2009. According to Kuwar, the park is doing the needful for infrastructure development with the rise in number of tigers.