International Tiger Day is being celebrated all around the globe today on 29th July. Nepal is also celebrating this day by making different efforts to conserve tigers and raise awareness of it to greater population with a harmonious slogan "Human-Tiger Co-existence". The Global Tiger day is observed with an objective of spreading public awareness for Royal Bengal tiger conservation.
The Ministry of Forests and Environment is celebrating a special program at the zoo in Jawalakhel, Lalitpur as part of the main program of the day. Likewise, the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Department under the Ministry has arranged to play a 'ringtone' on the telephone service of Nepal Telecom for tiger conservation day.
''I would like to express my special thanks to conservationists, security personnel, locals, media persons and supporting organizations for their tireless efforts to save tigers as Nepal has played leading role across the globe in tiger conservation'', President Ram Chandra Paudel mentioned in today's program.
''The development of national parks and wildlife reserves has helped to make the habitat of tiger safe. It is necessary to take special initiative to launch alternative programme of livelihood to reduce locals’ dependency on forest fodders in order to lessen human-wildlife conflict'', reads the message.
He added, 'As the number of tigers in Nepal has increased, it can be easily assumed that the morale of conservationists has increased. It is necessary to continue conservation by providing information about the importance of tigers in human life and ways to reduce human-tiger conflict."
The Royal Bengal tiger is found in 13 countries. The Tiger Summit of the Heads of State and Government of these 13 countries held in Saint Petersburg in 2010 promised to double the number of tigers by 2022.
In the summit, Nepal had promised to double its population of tigers. Nepal has been celebrating the Global Tiger Day since 2067 BS and has been conducting tiger census. Nepal which had only 121 numbers of Tigers in census-2009 successfully hit and crossed its target developing the number to 335 at census-2022.
