The Nepal Tiger Project

Oct 23^rd, 2012 Den Site

We had no tiger or big cat movement last night, and unfortunately, we woke up to a bull yak that came down into the area with the aim of displacing the current top dog. Or rather, the number one bull on the mountain. The mean bull yak belongs to another herder, grazing a smaller heard to the south. This bull yak is much older and larger than the current heard leader and took over the heard with out much of a fight from the other bull yak. Problem was, yaks don't like people they've never seen or smelled before. That would include Americans. I was in no position to argue with the yak, knowing that he could easily run me down.

The yak's tail stood at attention as he glared directly at me; squaring off for a challenge. I exerted just enough energy to jet across to the other hill. A safe distance away but out of breath, I retained the feeling of being totally helpless. Rather get clawed by a tiger than gored by a yak, I thought to myself.

The girls moved their herd off a safe distance away from our camp and both bull yaks followed. After a quick breakfast we beat feet out of the area in search of the reported tiger's den.

The area we found was as the village woman had described. A large matted area in the jungle with fallen trees where she had observed, from a far distance, tiger cubs playing and destroying tree branches. We had hoped to find good prints in the area, or even the carcass of a dead cub. The prints we believed we found were marginal. The tigers had left the den long ago and nature had begun to reclaim all traces of prints left in the earth. No dead tiger cubs were found, which I suppose is a good thing, But I would imagine tigers born in this area would have a high mortality rate.

However, this den represents to me more concrete evidence that tigers do occur in this part of Nepal. We'll give it a few more days before heading back towards Kathmandu.