Human - Animal Conflict

Tigers

In Asia , tigers are suffering not only from significant loss of habitat but also from a decline in their prey species. As a result, more and more tigers are forced to search for food among the domestic livestock that many local communities depend on heavily for their livelihood. When livestock predation occurs, tigers are often captured, killed in retaliation or actively persecuted in an effort to prevent similar events happening in the future.

Sometimes the carcasses of livestock killed by tigers are baited in order to poison the tiger when it returns to its kill, also killing any other animal that chooses to opportunistically feed on the carcass. Tiger prey species are also killed by villagers in retaliation for destroying essential crops, further exacerbating the problem by reducing the availability of the tiger’s natural source of food.

Human-tiger conflicts are not only one of the biggest threats to the world’s remaining tigers, but pose a major problem for communities living in or near tiger habitat, and tiger attacks on humans have also increased in recent years. WWF is committed to working with these communities to find solutions which will allow them to live alongside tigers without conflict.

Solutions

A wide range of different projects to mitigate human-tiger conflicts have been established by WWF and many other conservation organisations, in partnership with governments throughout the Asian region. To increase the conservation impact, programmes are normally developed in critical tiger habitats such as around a protected area or in a corridor between protected areas or key habitats.

The simplest mitigation measures involve the establishment of compensation schemes to reimburse villagers that have lost livestock to tigers, however it is also important to address the root cause of the conflicts. For example, WWF is currently working to change livestock management to prevent tiger kills, and to provide livelihood alternatives to local communities to reduce their dependence on forest resources, thus reducing the likelihood of tiger attacks on humans. In addition, several crop-protection initiatives are also in place to reduce crop loss to wild ungulates.

Ideally, over the long term, the affected communities will take on increasing levels of control over the programme, which eventually becomes as internally regulated and self-sustaining as possible.