KATHMANDU, March 4 (Xinhua) -- A national park in western Nepal has captured a Royal Bengal Tiger believed to have killed five persons in the past few months.
After a weeks-long hunt, the Banke National Park in Lumbini Province found and darted the tiger. "We finally captured the tiger after tranquilizing it and took it to the Chitwan National Park on Thursday," Kunnarayan Chaudhary, an information officer at the park, told Xinhua on Friday.
"We believe the deaths due to tiger attacks will come down now," he said, noting that since Sept. 13 last year and until last month, four Nepalis and one Indian national had been killed by the tiger.
At least 29 people have lost their lives under tiger attacks in the last three years in and near the Banke National Park and Bardiya National Park, according to Rabin Kadariya, chief of the National Trust for Nature Conservation in Bardiya.
"We have seen increasing cases of human-wildlife conflict leading to an increase in the deaths of people," he told Xinhua. "While it is a matter of pride that the tiger population has increased over Nepal's commitment, the loss of human lives is increasing too."
In January, the Bardiya National Park and India's Sathyamangalam Tiger Reserve won TX2 Award for doubling their tiger populations since 2010.
Kadariya said that in the last five years, they have captured seven man-eating tigers and the animals have not been released back to the national parks. ■