Abstract
The source populations of tigers are mostly confined to protected areas, which are now becoming isolated. A landscape scale conservation strategy should strive to facilitate dispersal and survival of dispersing tigers by managing habitat corridors that enable tigers to traverse the matrix with minimal conflict. We present evidence for tiger dispersal along transboundary protected areas complexes in the Terai Arc Landscape, a priority tiger landscape in Nepal and India, by comparing camera trap data, and through population models applied to the long term camera trap data sets. The former showed that 11 individual tigers used the corridors that connected the transboundary protected areas. The estimated population growth rates using the minimum observed population size in two protected areas in Nepal, Bardia National Park and Suklaphanta National Park showed that the increases were higher than expected from growth rates due to in situ reproduction alone. These lines of evidence suggests that tigers are recolonizing Nepal’s protected areas from India, after a period of population decline, and that the tiger populations in the transboundary protected areas complexes may be maintained as meta-population. Our results demonstrate the importance of adopting a landscape-scale approach to tiger conservation, especially to improve population recovery and long term population persistence.
Highlights
The tiger (Panthera tigris), arguably Asia’s most iconic large carnivore, has been extirpated from over 93% of its historic range [1]
A female tiger was photographed in both VTR and CNP at distances of over 17 km apart and the area included within the 100% Minimum Convex Polygons (MCP) was over 113 km2
Another male photographed in both VTR and CNP, had furthest capture points of over 35 km, and a 100% MCP of over 248 km2. Another male was photographed in VTR, close to the border of CNP, and had a camera trap 100% MCP of 21 km2
Summary
The tiger (Panthera tigris), arguably Asia’s most iconic large carnivore, has been extirpated from over 93% of its historic range [1]. Smith et al [14] identified three tiger sub-populations in the Nepal Terai, centered around three major protected areas, namely Suklaphanta National Park, Bardia National Park, and Chitwan National Park, with a few resident tigers in intervening forest patches, suggesting some remnants of historical dynamics. When the Terai Arc program was initiated in 2001, a landscape analysis identified several potential corridors that could provide ecological connectivity among the protected areas [18]. These included transboundary corridors between protected areas in Nepal and India (Fig 1). We present evidence to show that these habitat corridors have enabled tiger recovery in Nepal’s protected areas and support the meta-population dynamics of tigers in transboundary protected areas complexes in the Terai Arc
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