The rebound of tiger populations in Nepal over the last decade has renewed the hope for species conservation. The majority of Nepal's tiger population lives in the Chitwan-Parsa Complex (CPC), a protected area covering both the core parks, which prohibit humans, and buffer zones in which some human activities are permitted. To better understand the distribution of the burgeoning tiger population within the CPC and its adjacent forested areas, we constructed a Bayesian occupancy model based on data from an extensive sign survey conducted by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation between December 2020 and February 2021. The average estimated occupancy within 10 km X 10 km grids and detection within 2 km X 2km subgrids were [0.90 (CI 0.76 – 0.98)] and [0.34 (CI 0.32 -0.36)], respectively. Tigers were found to be more strongly related to prey occupancy at the home-range scale, whereas factors such as vegetation, human population density, and elevation affected which portion of the home range was used. Human population density significantly reduced habitat use by tigers and prey. We compare our results against "tiger rescue" records, where veterinary teams track and relocate specific tigers involved in conflicts. We found that in the buffer region, 2.8 times more rescues occurred in subgrids with above-average estimated use. The high number of tiger rescue cases within high-use buffer regions indicates an increased likelihood of human-tiger conflict in those areas and could inform future approaches to tiger conservation and conflict resolution.

Funding provided by: N/ACrossref Funder Registry ID: 0