completed · Climate

Monitoring Tiger Populations in the Terai Arc Landscape, Nepal

The purpose of this grant is to support assessment of the status of Nepals tigers (now routinely carried out at four year intervals) to evaluate the effectiveness of conservation interventions taken since the last assessment and to provide information needed to plan conservation interventions for the upcoming four years. The Recipient will do this by: (1) forming a central task force in the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) made up of representatives from DNPWC, the Department of Forest, WWF Nepal and the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) to review and adapt the monitoring methods based on the monitoring protocol produced in 2008; (2) form the field monitoring teams for each of the five protected areas that will carry out the fieldwork; (3) train and orient the monitoring teams; (4) carry out camera trapping surveys to estimate tiger populations in Suklaphanta Wildlife Reserve, Bardia National Park, Banke National Park, Chitwan National Park and Parsa Wildlife as well as the critical habitat corridors of Khata, Basanta, Kamdi and Barandabahar; (5) carry out habitat occupancy surveys both inside and outside of the protected areas to include the occupancy pattern of both tigers and their prey as well as relevant data such as cattle grazing, tree lopping, tree cutting, encroachment and poaching sign; (6) carry out line transect surveys for prey species; (7) carry out analysis of the camera-trapping data, the occupancy data, and the prey transect data; and (8) work with the task force to prepare a comprehensive report detailing the results of the tiger camera trapping in the core areas of the major protected areas, the occupancy surveys of both tigers and prey at the landscape level and the prey density work.