On January 6th, 2004, a group of villagers from a town in Nepal were venturing out into the jungle to collect wood when Bhadai Tharu was attacked by a tiger.  Tharu was knocked out, the rest of the group fled the scene, and Tharu was discovered by a group of nearby grass cutters where he was rushed to a hospital in Nepalganj.  When he arrived at the hospital, doctors discovered that the tiger had scooped out his left eye.

After spending a month recovering in the hospital, Tharu was angry that the one thing he was trying to save would attack him like this.  “I was furious with the tiger,” Tharu said in an interview with CNN news on November 15, 2023. “Inside, I was seething with anger, and I even felt the urge to return to the jungle and seek vengeance against the tiger.”  Despite being angry with the tiger about attacking him, Tharu soon came to realize that “the jungle is the tiger’s home, and it only attacked me out of fear that I might harm its habitat.” (CNN News November 15, 2023.)

According to recent research, by the beginning of the 20th century about 100,000 tigers roamed Nepal.  Today there are around only 355 wild tigers in Nepal and they are being hunted every day.  This is why Tharu spends his life trying to save them.  After a recent spike in tiger attacks, and more and more people wanting to remove the tigers from their habitats, Tharu called a meeting with his local tiger protection team. In an interview with BBC news on July 28th, 2023, Tharu gives a quote from the meeting. “A misunderstanding divides humans and wildlife,” Tharu tells them.  “Our forest is the tigers’ home. If we intrude into their habitat, they will get angry. If we allow goats to graze in the forest, then they will attack.”