Inside rescue centers of Nepal’s national parks, tigers are forced to live in grim conditions, confined to tiny cages of just a few square meters, even though they need at least 0.5 hectares of space to stay active and healthy. A recent news article in a national daily reported that Parsa National Park, one of Nepal’s major tiger habitats, does not have enough budget to adequately feed and care for the tigers in captivity. The park also lacks dedicated personnel for their care, leaving game scouts to take on the responsibility.
When I contacted the park’s information officer, Mr. Santosh Bhagat, he said that the country’s finance ministry, which allocates the environmental budget, almost never provides enough funding for national parks and continues to reduce their budgets each year.
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| An exhausted Bengal tiger rests in a cramped enclosure, reflecting the harsh realities of captivity and the urgent need for better wildlife welfare. Photo: Manish Koirala / DALL·E (AI-generated). |
With just 121 tigers in 2009, Nepal joined a global commitment to double its tiger population within a decade. A decade and a half later, Nepal now has about 355 of these big cats, making the country a global leader in tiger conservation.
But this achievement has come with its own set of challenges. Human fatalities from tiger attacks have significantly increased across the country, with an official estimate of 75 deaths in the last seven years. Tigers usually attack humans when their natural prey becomes scarce in their habitat or when they become unfit for hunting in the wild due to injuries or old age. When the big cats begin attacking humans, they are captured by local national parks and held in captivity for rehabilitation.
Currently, two tigers are in captivity in Parsa National Park, with many more held across other major parks in Nepal, such as Chitwan National Park. Mr. Bhagat says that rescue centers are not meant to house tigers permanently; the animals are usually released once they recover from their injuries and can hunt in the wild again. However, in 2024, three captive tigers in Parsa National Park and one in Chitwan National Park died inside their harsh enclosures. This raises serious concerns about whether the tigers currently held across Nepal’s national parks will ever make it out alive.