Hi Alienor,

To put my comments into context, my feedback is around your general strategy based on some research I’ve done previously on this topic. You may also want to try to contact Simon Pooley who is an expert on human-wildlife conflict and works at Birkbeck university in London. Simon is also a crocodile expert and therefore well versed in human-wildlife/predator conflict.

I would encourage you to look at other successful and less successful Tiger conservation projects to obtain a holistic view on what works in Tiger conservation and what doesn’t to help inform your strategy further and develop a multi-pronged approach to increase your initiative’s chances of success.

Chitwan National Park in Nepal is a success story and there are a few articles and research papers available which show their strategy had many interdependent facets/areas that were addressed, namely:

• Obtaining tangible and visible support from the Nepalese government
• Stakeholder awareness raising via workshops held by top Tiger conservationists and experts.
• Tackling poaching through intentional legislation and establishment of wildlife crime central units given the powers to arrest poachers. Locals were also given this ability.
• New monitoring and evaluation tools implemented.
• Education future generations and locals e.g. The Ecoclub for children
• Forests protected and restored
• Understanding the effect of stewardship and faith and using this to promote conservation efforts.

I would encourage you to read this recent article on restoring Tiger populations in Bhutan which also used a multi and interdisciplinary strategy to increase its Tiger population.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/restoring-ecosystems-and-tiger-populations-bhutan

Hope this helps.

Helena.

Hi there! It's awesome that you've shared this here and are asking for feedback. 

I have two thoughts to share on the Theory of Change related to motivating behaviors.

1) The "Love for Tigers" campaign. It's worth exploring through qualitative research if motivating people to "love" tigers will be a realistic goal of a campaign. In situations like these, it can be hard to transition people from "I fear and hate tigers" to "I love them." A more feasible creative strategy could be focusing on co-existence ("we're tiger-friendly") or focused mainly on the human-side ("keeping our families and livelihoods safe, while also protecting nature") - which is the responsibility angle you mention in the diagram.

2) Related is the box on "fear of being arrested increases". You can link together these two initiatives: increasing a sense of responsibility for co-existence can serve as a deterrent for killing tigers, especially as it becomes more of a social norm and expectation. Only relying on fear or penalties (i.e., all stick and no carrot) can be difficult to achieve results if enforcement is not strong or able to catch all the infractions. I typically recommend a healthy balance of motivators first and risk of penalty second. Here's a short slideshare I developed on this topic: https://brooketully.com/slideshare/

Hope that helps. Good luck!

-brooke

Thanks a lot for sharing – this will help us all get better at strategy development. Here are some comments in case they ae useful:

Situation analysis:

Think the grouping/documentation of how/why people are attacked is very strong.

Think there could be a factor about “Tahru villagers loose crops to x” before “Tharu farmers sleeping in fields”

Could be some explanatory factors about why tigers are being killed by road vehicles – drivers speeding? Drivers driving drunk?

I would split Tiger killing into the different specific threats – poaching/electrocution etc.

Need some more factors explaining reasons for hunting for bushmeat

Am guessing “local villagers” contain both Tharu and other groups – do you need this differentiation?

ToC:

I would have a result about gain in skills relating to safety training

Need results to drive increase of fear of being arrested

Would split out threat into specific threats to help monitoring and evaluation later on

The whole ToC assumes a) motivation by local people to participate in these activities b) a strong positive relationship between the local people and the project team implementing the work packages. If motivation/relationship is not there, then all activities will fail unless you do a community engagement type work package first.

Thanks a lot for sharing – this will help us all get better at strategy development. Here are some comments in case they ae useful:

Situation analysis:

Think the grouping/documentation of how/why people are attacked is very strong.

Think there could be a factor about “Tahru villagers loose crops to x” before “Tharu farmers sleeping in fields”

Could be some explanatory factors about why tigers are being killed by road vehicles – drivers speeding? Drivers driving drunk?

I would split Tiger killing into the different specific threats – poaching/electrocution etc.

Need some more factors explaining reasons for hunting for bushmeat

Am guessing “local villagers” contain both Tharu and other groups – do you need this differentiation?

ToC:

I would have a result about gain in skills relating to safety training

Need results to drive increase of fear of being arrested

Would split out threat into specific threats to help monitoring and evaluation later on

The whole ToC assumes a) motivation by local people to participate in these activities b) a strong positive relationship between the local people and the project team implementing the work packages. If motivation/relationship is not there, then all activities will fail unless you do a community engagement type work package first.

Thanks a lot for sharing – this will help us all get better at strategy development. Here are some comments in case they ae useful:

Situation analysis:

Think the grouping/documentation of how/why people are attacked is very strong.

Think there could be a factor about “Tahru villagers loose crops to x” before “Tharu farmers sleeping in fields”

Could be some explanatory factors about why tigers are being killed by road vehicles – drivers speeding? Drivers driving drunk?

I would split Tiger killing into the different specific threats – poaching/electrocution etc.

Need some more factors explaining reasons for hunting for bushmeat

Am guessing “local villagers” contain both Tharu and other groups – do you need this differentiation?

ToC:

I would have a result about gain in skills relating to safety training

Need results to drive increase of fear of being arrested

Would split out threat into specific threats to help monitoring and evaluation later on

The whole ToC assumes a) motivation by local people to participate in these activities b) a strong positive relationship between the local people and the project team implementing the work packages. If motivation/relationship is not there, then all activities will fail unless you do a community engagement type work package first.