The Diary of a Tiger Researcher

A snowy start

From day one, the hills of Dadeldhura greeted us with the unexpected  - we arrived to find a thick dusting of snow. Snowfall is common in the hilly district but in the context of our mission, which was to camera trap a tiger that locals had supposedly seen roaming these paths, the mid-March snowy greeting only piled on more doubt. Further uncertainty was also fuelled by past experiences, where reports of tiger sightings proved false upon validation. 

But one thing science has always taught us is to remain hopeful, no matter how vague the picture may be. So we set our gears in motion.

Dusk in Dadeldhura

My colleague Karun Dewan and I began preparing for the survey, which spanned across healthy forested patches in the region, determined by images on Google earth. We were there to orient and train citizen scientists and forest personnel on camera trap operations, GPS handling, map reading, and camera deployment.

The teams set up camera traps over the next 2-5 days, guided by territorial marking sites, such as scrapes, scat, and pugmarks, as well as potential tiger pathways in the hilly regions, such as ridge lines and cliff trails.

With fingers crossed, I returned to Kathmandu, looking forward to a call from the citizen scientists who would be monitoring and reviewing data from the camera traps every five days over the month-long survey.

False hope

The call came sooner than expected. Within a week after the last camera trap was set, an elated citizen scientist announced that a tiger had been photographed in one of the stations! While waiting for the images to arrive, my colleague, Sabita Malla and I eagerly discussed the many implications of this finding. From potentially linking new habitats for tigers to extending our survey to other healthy forests in the region and all the positive implications for Nepal’s conservation sector—there was much to discuss.

Our conversation was cut short when the photo arrived. Upon closer inspection, we found that the camera trap had photographed a barely visible leopard cat. Our excitement was premature.

Luck at last

After the false alarms, unanticipated challenges, and capture of various other species, it was back to a waiting game - that is until another call from a citizen scientist revived our hopes. 

Our eyes didn’t trick us this time. Hopes turned into jubilance when we could confirm with full certainty that it was indeed a tiger. It was official: an individual tiger had been camera trapped at an altitude of ~2500m, confirming their presence in the Mahabharata range - record-breaking evidence of a tiger at such high altitudes in Nepal.