810 B. Sharma et al.
and at various times of the day (Supplementary Figs 2, 3). Tigers were most commonly seen in winter and in the even- ing, although there were no significant differences amongst seasons or times of day. Thirty-seven of 177 respondents had experienced negative tiger interactions: the six attacks within the settlements and 31 additional interactions in the forest. Tiger attacks did not differ between seasons but were significantly higher during day and night than in the early morning or evening (Supplementary Fig. 3). The attacks in the forest occurred whilst people grazed live- stock or collected forest products, and included attacks on both people and livestock. The six attacks within a settle- ment were on livestock, in sheds in Pattharbhuji. In all of these cases, the livestock sheds were open and within 10–30 m of the forest edge. Of the 33 tiger records within settlements, 36% were
FIG. 3 Percent of respondents visiting the forest for resource collection daily, weekly, monthly and yearly in four settlements in the Khata Corridor in Nepal (Fig. 1), with the degree of economic benefit from tourism (Table 1) indicated in parentheses. (Readers of the printed journal are referred to the online article for a colour version of this figure.)
settlement economic category (greater frequency of visits with lower economic category). For example, numbers of people from Pattharbhuji visiting the forest on a daily, week- ly and monthly basis were 1,042, 27 and nine times higher, respectively, than yearly compared with people from Thakurdwara (Supplementary Table 3).Weobserved a simi- lar pattern for the Dalla and Neulapur settlements in com- parison to Thakurdwara. However, other variables in the best-fit model did not provide a clear explanation for the pat- tern of forest visitation. For instance, number of livestock did not influence daily or weekly forest visitation patterns, but it affected visitation frequency when comparing monthly with yearly visitation. We observed similar irregular patterns in the age and gender categories. In terms of seasonality and time of day, forest visitation
was significantly highest in the winter and during the day- time, respectively (Supplementary Figs 2, 3). The primary reasons for forest visitations included grass harvesting for thatch and hut construction (khar khadai in Nepali), collecting lianas (lahara in Nepali) and fruits (especially plums, bayer,in Nepali) and for grazing livestock.Duration of visits was 3–7 h.
Tiger records in settlements
A total of 33 tiger records were documented within the boundaries of settlements and georeferenced during field visits. These included 24 sightings, six locations of tiger at- tacks and three observations of pugmarks. Respondents in only 24 of 177 households had seen a tiger within a settle- ment’s boundary, and no household reported more than one sighting. These sightings occurred across all seasons
FIG. 4 Variation in distances of the 33 tiger records (sightings, pugmarks and attacks) within the three settlements from forest, grazing land, households, roads and water features in the Khata Corridor. The y-axis shows the distance from each record to the nearest landscape feature. The horizontal spread of the data points facilitates visualization of the density and distribution of the distances, with wider sections indicating distances at which tiger records are concentrated. (Readers of the printed journal are referred to the online article for a colour version of this figure.)
Oryx, 2024, 58(6), 806–814 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605323001849
within 100 m of a river or stream bank. The next most fre- quent location was in open grassland (21%), followed by proximal to roads (18%). There were few records of tigers at the forest edge (9%) or in areas of human habitation (15%). Tiger records were a mean of 50.5 ± SD 39.1 m from the nearest forest edge and 414.7 ± SD 423.7 m from the nearest household (Fig. 4), indicating that tigers mostly limit their movements to within forests and rarely enter set- tlements. Mean distances from grazing land (280.9 ± SD 250.4 m), water features (279.3 ± SD 262.1 m) and roads (236.5 ± SD 296.2 m) were intermediate and comparable (Fig. 4). The binary logistic regression model that included settlement type and distance to the nearest forest was the most strongly supported based on its low AICc value (Supplementary Table 2). A similar model but with the
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