Study

Factors associated with human-killing tigers in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

Gurung, B.; Smith, J. L. D.; McDougal, C.; Karki, J. B.; Barlow, A.

Biological Conservation, 2008

Peer-reviewedlongitudinal studywild

What they did

Records of tiger attacks on people around Chitwan over three decades were compiled, and the individual tigers responsible identified and examined where they could be located.

Studied in: Panthera tigris
Sample size: attacks on people over three decades, with identified tigers where possible

Attacks are attributable to a small number of individual animals rather than to the population, and those individuals are disproportionately old, injured or displaced from their ranges. The rate rose as tigers occupied buffer-zone forest bordering settlement.

What it means

The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.

How the authors put it

Human-killing is a behaviour of particular individuals under particular circumstances, and is best addressed by identifying and removing those animals rather than by treating the population as dangerous.

How NatureHQ reads it

Cited carefully, and on a page that has to say something about this. The honest summary is that the risk is real, extremely localised, and produced by identifiable individual animals in identifiable circumstances — which is a different statement from either "tigers are man-eaters" or the reassuring version that pretends the risk is zero. NatureHQ is not in a position to give safety advice to people living alongside tigers, and does not.

Limitations

Historical records of varying completeness, particularly for the earliest decades.
The tiger responsible could not always be identified, so the individual-attribution rate is a lower bound.
One landscape with a specific configuration of park, buffer zone and settlement.