Trekking through the dense forests of Nepal, you never know what could be lurking behind the trees or what may have walked the same path a few hours before, but I always held out hope for a glimpse of those iconic stripes.
I’ve spent most of my life studying tigers, tracking their movements, analysing their scat, their paw prints and capturing their images on camera traps. But for 20 years, I’d never seen one in the wild in Nepal. Was I the unluckiest tiger researcher in the world?
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I caught a glimpse of a tiger in 2004, not in Nepal, but across the border in India’s Corbett National Park. I was attending a workshop on human-tiger conflict hosted by WWF-India and the late P.K. Sen, former Director of WWF India’s Tiger and Wildlife Division. That was my first ever tiger sighting, it appeared for just a second, an orange blur vanishing into the forest. It was thrilling, but fleeting.
It left me wanting more, but also left me wondering: would I ever see one at home? That was it, this was my personal goal, my obsession. I would see a tiger in Nepal one day.
By 2014, I’d completed my PhD, focusing on tiger ecology in Nepal’s Churia Range. I knew the terrain intimately, almost feeling as at home there as the tigers themselves. I’d walked the trails, studied the signs, and reviewed the camera traps, but the tiger remained elusive.
Despite their amazing orange and black fur, tigers are experts at staying camouflaged. Maybe they were there the whole time, watching me while hidden amongst the thick, green forest. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. I’d begun to believe that I was somehow 'unlucky’.
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In South Asia, and especially in Nepal, we call the tiger the 'royal Bengal tiger'. And like all things royal, it’s rarely seen. Their elusiveness is part of their power and one of my favourite things about them.
A tiger’s roar can carry for over two miles, so I’ve heard them many times, and yet they often communicate in complete silence. They use a technique called ‘chuffing’, a friendly, low-frequency sound like a puff of air to greet one another, show affection, or communicate without being detected by prey.
Tigers were once abundant, in Nepal, they roamed the lowland forests along the entire length of the country. But deforestation and poaching of tigers and their prey pushed them to the brink. The last tiger in eastern Nepal was seen in the 1970s. Today, they survive only in the central and western parts of the country, confined to five national parks in the Terai Arc landscape.
But Nepal’s tiger story is one of hope and leadership.
In the 1970s and 80s, the Nepalese government partnered with the Smithsonian Institution to launch the Terai Ecology Project in Nepal, a pioneering initiative that laid the foundation for modern tiger conservation. Then in the 1990s, Nepal introduced a Buffer Zone Policy, returning up to 50% of revenue from national parks to local communities. This empowered people to become stewards of the forest, and it worked.
In 2010, world leaders pledged to double wild tiger numbers by 2022, and Nepal rose to the challenge. With strong political will, community engagement, and support from organisations like WWF, we increased our tiger population from 121 to 355.
Today, we’ve embraced technology, with real-time patrolling systems, sniffer dogs, and camera traps to protect tigers and disrupt illegal trade routes. And Nepal’s Zero Poaching Framework has now become a model adopted by countries across Asia and Africa.
But the work is far from over. Tigers remain a conservation-dependent species, with poaching and habitat loss still threatening their survival. That’s why community-based conservation is vital. Local volunteers and citizen scientists are now on the frontlines, supporting law enforcement agencies in protecting tigers in buffer zones and corridors.
The tiger is a global icon for conservation, a symbol of resilience, mystery and unity. It has brought together governments, scientists, and communities in a shared mission to protect our natural world. But after two decades working to protect tigers, and all the joy that brought me, I still longed to see them in Nepal.
Then, in early 2020, everything changed.
I was visiting Bardia National Park, deep in the Terai Arc Landscape, when a young male tiger emerged from the tall stalks of grass to quench its thirst. He lingered for two full minutes. I watched, breathless, as the sunlight caught the ripple of his stripes. After twenty years, I had finally seen a tiger in the wild in Nepal. This was my dream come true, a moment that filled me with a renewed enthusiasm and a deep sense of awe. That moment was more than a personal milestone, it was a reminder of why I do this work.
And, after 20 years, I can finally say I’ve seen the stripes.
Top image: Tiger in Bardia National Park, Nepal. Credit: Emmanuel Rondeau, WWF-US
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