Pilibhit Tiger Reserve

Pilibhit Tiger Reserve, which is one of India’s 50 Project Tiger Tiger reserves, is located in Pilibhit district, Lakhimpur Kheri District and Bahraich District of Uttar Pradesh state in India. It is located on the India-Nepal border in the foothills of the Himalayas.

The Pilibhit district is one of the few well-forested districts in Uttar Pradesh and the forests in Pilibhit have multiple tigers and a good prey base for their survival.

Why is it in the news?

Forest officials have informed that an adult tigress was lynched by villagers which lived near the Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in the Terai region of Uttar Pradesh. While the locals claim that the tigress attacked them, the forest officials have noted that the tigress was within her natural habitat. A magisterial probe has also been ordered to investigate the entire sequence of events.

Increasing Man-Tiger Conflict

• As per the data available with the Wildlife Trust of India (WTI), between 2000 to 2018, a total of 98 cases of conflicts between humans and tigers which lead to human deaths and injuries had been recorded in the vicinity of the Dudhwa-Pilibhit Tiger landscape.
• These findings were reported in a 2018 report ?Living with the Wild?Mitigating Conflict between Humans and Big Cat Species in Uttar Pradesh,? which was jointly prepared by the WTI and the Forest Department.
• The WTI is a leading nature conservation organization which works closely with the State Wildlife Department (SWD).
• The WTI project team has rescued eight tigers from 36 human-tiger conflict situations, with four tigers successfully released back into the wild since 2009.

The main cause of the human-tiger conflict is the fast deforestation and fragmentation of tiger habitats and human encroachment in forest space.