Our findings affirm the notion that effective management
policies, such as those policies that improve habitat conditions
and lower exploitation, are more important to tiger conservation
than human density per se (41). Unique socioeconomic and institutional
factors in Chitwan, such as park management intensity,
tourism infrastructure, initiatives to include local communities in
ecodevelopment, massive efforts to reduce and control poaching,
and social tolerance to tigers (19, 42, 43), likely increased the
capacity for tigers and people to coexist at fine spatial scales. As
such, the spatial and temporal interactions between people and
tigers observed in Chitwan may differ in other human-dominated
regions that have different socioeconomic and institutional characteristics.