Why does conflict occur?
Specific drivers of human-tiger conflict (HTC) may include:
- Reduced availability of prey: Healthy tigers will preferentially hunt wild prey. However, when natural prey density falls, domestic animals may be targeted – a situation made worse when livestock can roam free and graze unsupervised in or close to protected areas. Poaching of prey species, loss of grazing to livestock, habitat degradation or loss can all result in low prey numbers, as can seasonal shortages in severe winter conditions in some parts of the tiger range.
- Injury: Injuries acquired through fighting, hunting, failed poaching attempts (traps, snares, gunshot wounds), collisions with road vehicles or trains and other conflict incidents can all inhibit a tiger’s ability to hunt. Under these circumstances tigers may try to catch easier prey including livestock and people. A study of HTC in the Russian Far East estimated that over 70% of the tigers that attacked people were themselves already injured. In most cases these injuries were the result of human activity such as attempts at poaching (Goodrich et al., 2011a). In Jim Corbett’s well-known accounts of hunting man-eating tigers in the Kumaon area of India during the first half of the 20th century many of the cats concerned had been suffering from chronic and infected wounds caused by gunshots or embedded porcupine quills – and sometimes both (Corbett, 1944, 1954). Similar observations were made by Khan (1987) in respect of tigers involved in conflict in Malaysia. In Chitwan National Park, Nepal, Gurung et al (2008) found that 56% of human-killing tigers between 1979 to 2006 that were examined had physical deformities. Although it is easy to imagine that severe dental disease involving many teeth could compromise a tigers ability to hunt effectively, the commonly held belief that fractured canine teeth alone may be responsible for tigers attacking domestic stock and humans in preference to wild prey doesn’t bear close scrutiny (Goodrich et al., 2011b).
- Disease: Like injury, disease can hinder tigers’ ability to hunt and force them to take easier prey. Some diseases may have an even more direct effect on HTC by causing a change in a tiger’s natural behaviour. For example, several tigers infected with canine distemper virus have appeared to lose all fear of people, readily entering villages in broad daylight and seeming unperturbed by the presence of humans. General debility or exhaustion towards the end of a tiger’s life for whatever reason may predispose it to HTC,
- Transient tigers: Where tigers have high reproductive rates (i.e. in protected areas with high prey densities and low poaching rates) some young individuals will disperse into human-dominated landscapes in search of vacant territories and some old, injured or diseased tigers will be pushed out into these landscapes (Karanth & Gopal, 2005). In one study of HTC in the Chitwan National Park in Nepal Lamechhane et al (2017) found that transient tigers without a territory or physically impaired animals are more likely to be involved in conflict behaviour.
- Human incursion into protected areas: As local people attempt to harvest forest products within tiger habitats the likelihood of tiger encounters increases. This is particularly true when people are operating illegally and may be entering the forest at night to avoid detection. Although generally shy, tigers encountered in the forest can become aggressive, particularly if they are defending a kill or have young nearby.