Terai's Gujjar community prepared to resettle for tiger conservation

Researchers have revealed that people in the western Terai Arc Landscape, India, are prepared to relocate their homes and families to help conserve tigers.

The study undertaken by researchers from the University's Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology (DICE), the research evaluates the ecological and habitat needs of wildlife in the region and the socio-economic needs and priorities of the local forest-dependent community, known as the Gujjars.

Described in two published papers, the research provides evidence that recovery of wild tiger populations can be achieved hand-in-hand with meeting the livelihood aspirations of the Gujjars.

In the first part of the research, the team found that by reintroducing tigers into a section of the landscape that suffers from a lack of connectivity to high density tiger populations, as well as carrying out targeted actions to recover important tiger prey at specific sites across the landscape, there was the potential to increase tiger populations by around 68 per cent.

Results from the second part showed an overwhelming preference among Gujjars households interviewed for resettlement outside the forests. This signalled an unexpected opportunity to expand inviolate habitat for tigers in a specific human-dominated landscape by meeting larger livelihood issues for local people, such as better access to education and health services.

The research has been published in two papers: one has been Diversity and Distributions while second has been published in Biological Conservation.