It all started when a curious wild tiger wandered into a hotel in the tourist-friendly town of Sauraha in Nepal. The male tiger, estimated to be one of only 3,200 tigers remaining in the wild, was hurt trying to flee the hotel during this incident last September. Conservation authorities took the tiger to a secure enclosure within Chitwan National Park so that he could properly rehabilitate.

The tiger slowly regained his strength. Meanwhile, conservationists, including the World Wildlife Fund, realized the rare opportunity they had before them with this tiger: the opportunity to translocate the tiger to a more suitable habitat and tag it with a GPS collar to track him on his mission to settle down in his new home.

This tiger has become the first in Nepal to be translocated and monitored in this way. Just in the last decade, 1,000 tigers were killed for their skins and parts. This tiger's new home is in the Babai Valley--where anti-poaching efforts have been improving.

These efforts are necessary if we're interested in protecting tigers and admiring their beauty... from afar or, in some cases, from our hotels. Read more about this tiger's story at Treehugger or at World Wildlife Fund's website, where you can see a video of the tiger receiving his GPS collar.

[photo by Elizabeth Seward]

Filed under: Activism, Learning, Asia, Nepal, Ecotourism, News