Women Face Higher Risk of Death in Nepal’s Tiger Attacks
Tigers attacked 245 people in Nepal between 2010 and 2024, killing 141 of them, with women facing a far higher risk of death than men, according to a new study published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.
Women accounted for just 85 of the attacks but 62 of the fatalities, giving them a fatality rate of more than 72 percent. Men, meanwhile, were attacked 160 times and suffered 79 deaths, putting their fatality rate at less than 50 percent.
The study also found that most attacks occurred not inside national parks but in the buffer zones and forests surrounding them, where local people regularly enter to collect firewood and fodder, graze livestock, gather other forest products and fish.
The findings come as recent attacks in Chitwan again highlight the risks faced by communities living alongside Nepal’s growing tiger population.
On August 16, 60-year-old Thakur Adhikari was injured in a tiger attack in Piple Deurali village of Rapti Municipality in eastern Chitwan. The tiger had strayed into the settlement and mauled Adhikari, leaving him with deep wounds to his leg. He is undergoing treatment at Bharatpur Hospital.
The same tiger had earlier attacked a cow in a nearby shed belonging to Dila Kumari Tamang.
Five days earlier, on August 12, Mangal Bote was killed by a tiger while inside a buffer zone forest in Meghauli, west of Chitwan National Park. Park authorities have since captured both tigers involved in the two incidents.
The latest attacks underscore a central finding of the study: people are far more likely to encounter tigers outside the core areas of national parks than inside them.
The paper was co-authored by researchers including Bed Kumar Dhakal, deputy director general and spokesperson at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, and wildlife experts Baburam Lamichhane, Naresh Subedi, Thakur Silwal, and Sanjay Kandel.
“Our goal was to analyse the underlying factors driving the total number of attacks,” said Lamichhane, whose PhD research focuses on human-tiger conflict.
