A video that went viral on social media recently shows a tiger chasing a rhino calf as the latter’s mother tries its best to protect the baby. The incident happened in Kumaroj Buffer Zone Community Forest of Chitwan on August 7. The calf about a month old sustained serious injuries and was rescued but died after three days.

The incident has made Ganesh Shrestha, chairman of the Kumaroj Buffer Zone Community Forest, anxious. “Both rhino and tiger are endangered species. Killing the baby of an endangered species by another is a serious issue. A solution should be found to protect rhino calves from the tiger,” said Shrestha.

Shrestha, a conservation enthusiast, met the chief conservation officer in Chitwan immediately after the August 7 incident and urged the authorities to take necessary measures to check fatal fights between the wild species. He believes that tigers cannot attack and kill rhino calves on a spacious grassland in the forest area.

“The rhinos may fail to sense the threat of tigers and to chase them away in bushy, forested areas. On open grasslands, rhinos easily notice the tigers and drive them away to save their calves,” said Shrestha.

He suggests managing grasslands in several buffer zone community forests for rhino conservation. “We are waiting for the national park’s permission despite having the necessary budget and tools for the grassland management in community forests,” he said.

It is not an isolated case of a tiger attack on a rhino calf. Baghmara Buffer Zone Community Forest near Sauraha is a major habitat of one-horned rhino. According to Jitu Tamang, chairman of Baghmara Buffer Zone Community Forest Consumers’ Committee, many mother rhinos live in Baghmara forest area with their babies. “There are currently six rhinos with their babies in the forest area,” said Tamang.

On June 16, 2023 a rhino calf of about 15-20 days was found injured in an apparent attack by a tiger in the Baghmara forest. The calf survived as it was rescued timely and treated. “This is the first incident of a tiger attack on a rhino calf in Baghmara as far as I know,” said Tamang.

The rhino called ‘Ram’ is now at the care centre of the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) in Sauraha. ‘Ram’ has two other friends—‘Dev’ and ‘Pooja’. They also had a similar fate. They were mauled by tigers. ‘Dev’ was rescued near Batulipokhari in Devnagar, Bharatpur, in May, 2023 while ‘Pooja’ was rescued from Raptighat area near Sauraha in 2022.

There are other incidents of similar nature in which the injured calves were not rescued or could not be saved even after rescue. According to Ganesh Prasad Tiwari, information officer at Chitwan National Park, as many as four rhino calves were killed by tigers in the national park and its surrounding areas in the fiscal year 2023-24. Seven rhino calves were killed in the fiscal year 2022-23.

As per the data from the country’s first national park, a total of 247 rhinos died or were killed in Chitwan and its surrounding areas over the past nine years. Among them, 16 rhino calves were killed by tigers.

According to conservationist Ram Kumar Aryal, who earlier served as the Sauraha chief of the NTNC, pregnant rhinos come out to the buffer zone areas from the park forest apparently to raise their newborns.

“As the forest is dense inside the national park, the threat of tigers is high. So the pregnant and mother rhinos emerge outside forests to relative safety from tiger attacks. Human activities in the community forest areas also repel tigers,” said Aryal, adding that the forests in the buffer zone are also getting dense now.

National Park officials, however, argue that the incidents of attack on rhino claves by tigers should not be taken as a serious conservation problem. “Tigers generally prey on spotted deer, sambar deer, bison and other small animals. They sometimes prey on wild boars and babies of big animals. So the attacks on rhino calves by tigers are natural activities of the forest,” claimed Tiwari.

Conservationists believe that the incidents of tiger attacks on rhino calves are on the rise lately with the increasing population of big cats and dense forests in the buffer zone as well.

Chitwan National Park is the major habitat of tigers, rhinos and several other endangered species in Nepal. There has been a rise in the population of both tigers and rhinos in the national park and its vicinity.

One-horned rhino, which is native to Nepal and India, is an endangered animal. Nepal is home to 752 one-horned rhinos and Chitwan National Park alone has 694, according to the national rhino census conducted in 2021. The 2015 count had found 605 rhinos in the park.

According to the latest tiger census held in 2021, the tiger population in Nepal has reached 355, with the country nearly tripling the number in 12 years. Chitwan is a major habitat for tigers with the CNP hosting 128 big cats in its forests and surrounding areas. In 2018, Chitwan Park was home to 93 tigers.