top of page
duncanstefanie84

Wildlife Conservation in Nepal: A Case Study of the Endangered One-Horned Rhinoceros



Among its many specialties, however, the beauty of Nepal lies largely in its success when it comes to wildlife conservation. Nepal has put itself on the front line when it comes to commitment in conserving and managing all sorts of resources and life-forms, including both plants and animals.




Essay On Wildlife Conservation In Nepal




Nepal has been tactically clever when it comes to conservation efforts. The period between 1973 and 1996, dominated by a protection-oriented conservation approach, did not yield much in terms of results. So Nepal declared a buffer zone in 1996. Since the declaration of the buffer zone, the human settlement areas adjacent to national parks, wildlife reserves, and conservation areas are given high priority and allowed to enjoy ownership of the resources nearby in a disciplined and sustainable manner.


I/NGOs like ZSL, NTNC, and the WWF conduct regular surveys of wildlife populations and habitat assessments as well. They have been providing technical and economic support in this context. They have catalyzed as well as increased the concentration of efforts of wildlife conservation.


Conserving wildlife controls over the ecosystem in a balanced way. Ecosystem is a chain of support of all living things and non-living things for existence. Conserving wildlife economically supports the country. Wild conservation needs reserves and national parks as well. They have to pay the certain amount of money to be entered and a big fund can be raised ultimately. Tourists keep on traveling and paying for seeing the endangered animals. Tourists spend money in our country and people become economically rich.


The recovery of the greater one-horned rhino is among the greatest conservation success stories in Asia. Thanks to strict protection and management from Indian and Nepalese wildlife authorities, the greater one-horned rhino was brought back from the brink. Today populations have increased to around 3,700 rhinos in northeastern India and the Terai grasslands of Nepal.


Nepal has established numerous national parks and reserves in order to protect its diverse fauna ever since 1973, with the passing of the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act 2029 BS. There are four different "classes" of protection, ranging from national parks and nature reserves to wildlife and hunting reserves. By 1992 Nepal had established seven national parks, protecting in total over 893,200 hectares (3,449 sq mi) of land.[3] Under these classes as of 2002 there were 23 protected areas in Nepal: nine national parks, three wildlife reserves, three conservation areas, one hunting reserve, three additional Ramsar sites, and four additional World Heritage Sites. The most noted world heritage sites are Sagarmatha National Park and Chitwan National Park. In addition, the world heritage site in the Kathmandu Valley also covers zones of significant biodiversity.[4]


Our results suggest that elephants and leopards should be the main focus of management efforts to minimize injury and the loss of human life and mitigate human-wildlife conflicts. This is based on three major findings: attacks by these species were (a) the most frequent, (b) common outside Pas (spatial dimension), and (c) associated with a high human fatality rate. Earlier attempts to resolve conflicts were confined mainly within the jurisdiction of PAs and included, among other strategies,(1) the deployment of electric fences to prevent wildlife movement towards human settlements, (2) building predator-proof corrals to prevent livestock loss by predators at night, and (3) the planting of crops that are unpalatable to wildlife, such as peppermint. These mitigation strategies undoubtedly helped to reduce conflict. However, the efficacy of such measures at a national level is low because there is minimal infrastructure in places where it is urgently needed to address some of these issues. The widespread common leopard, for example, causes conservation conflicts along the entire mid-hill region of Nepal, far from PAs, but district forest offices have no institutional capacity to respond (e.g., capturing leopards, engaging in conservation planning and monitoring animals). The same is true for dealing with conflicts with elephants in lowland Nepal. Therefore, there is an urgent need to build the institutional capacity to address conflicts with these two species as part of the framework of overall conservation planning [3,61]. Here, we provide species-specific recommendations to guide future research and conservation activities in Nepal with the goal of reducing human-wildlife conflict (Table 3).


Wildlife tourism is a powerful tool countries can leverage to grow and diversify their economies while protecting their biodiversity and meeting several Sustainable Development Goals. It is also a way to engage tourists in wildlife conservation and inject money into local communities living closest to wildlife. Success stories and lessons learned from nature-based tourism are emerging from across the globe.


The Global Wildlife Program (GWP) is led by the World Bank and funded by a $131 million grant from the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The program is working with 19 countries across Africa and Asia to promote wildlife conservation and sustainable development by combatting illicit trafficking in wildlife, and investing in wildlife-based tourism.


Like forests, wildlife is also a national resource, which not only helps in maintaining the ecological balance but is also beneficial from economic, recreational and aesthetic points of view. There was a time when human interference was minimum the number of wild animals was quite high and there was no problem of their protection or conservation. But, with the expansion of agriculture, settlement, industrial and other developmental activities and mainly due to greed of man, the number of wild animals gradually became lesser and lesser. With the result that several species of animals have become extinct and several, others are on the verge of being so.


Deforestation is also one of the main reasons for the loss of wildlife. Mass killings of wild animals for their meat, bones, fur, teeth, hair, skin, etc., are going on throughout the world. Therefore, the need for wildlife conservation has now become a necessity.


Although must countries of the world are very particular regarding conservation of wildlife, the number of wild animals is reducing day by day. World Wild Life Fund is the international agency, which is doing commendable work in promoting the protection of wildlife. There are national agencies also engaged in the conservation of wildlife.


India is a good example where several steps have been taken for wildlife conservation. It is a country of varied wildlife, where more than 500 types of wild animals, 2,100 types of birds and about 20,000 types of reptiles and fishes have been found. According to an estimate, in India, about 200 species of wild animals and birds have already become extinct and another 2,500 are on the verge of extinction.


Some of them are black buck, chinkara, wolf, swamp deer, nilgai, Indian gazelle, antelope, tiger, rhinoceros, gir lion, crocodile, flamingo, pelican, bustard, white crane, grey heron, mountain quail, etc. In India, the government and NGOs are taking keen interest in the protection of wildlife. The Wild Life Protection Act, 1972 has several provisions for the conservation of wildlife.


Here, we describe an integrated CHANS approach for analyzing the patterns, causes, and consequences of changes in wildlife population and habitat, human population and land use (Rindfuss et al. 2008), and their interactions (Linderman et al. 2005a, Bearer et al. 2008). Using this approach, we synthesize research in two globally important sites, the Wolong Nature Reserve (hereafter Wolong) in China and the Chitwan National Park (hereafter Chitwan) in Nepal, to explicate key relationships between people and two endangered wildlife conservation icons, the giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) and the Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris). Wolong and Chitwan are flagship protected areas located within global biodiversity hotspots (Myers et al. 2000) and support important populations of pandas and tigers, respectively. Because both of these species are confined to a fraction of the geographic ranges they once occupied, protecting their remaining habitat is crucial for their long-term survival. Thus, both of these protected areas are part of national and international programs to sustain populations of these conservation icons. Yet, in both sites, growing local human populations continue to pursue natural resource-based livelihoods. We provide a foundation for a cross-site synthesis by integrating information about CHANS processes in both sites. Through the synthesis, we highlight several important implications of using a CHANS approach for wildlife conservation that is useful not only in China (Liu 2010) and Nepal, but in many other places around the world facing similar challenges.


We next highlight wildlife impacts on humans, human impacts on wildlife, and how these impacts are interlinked in both sites. We also investigate the role of natural and human disturbance, conservation policies, and feedbacks on both of the coupled systems. We pay particular attention to how conservation policies mediate human-wildlife interactions because policies are human-made and therefore can be modified to influence system dynamics. Development policies also strongly influence system dynamics in both sites; however, a review of their effects is beyond the scope of this work.


In addition to the number of households, their spatial distribution influences the degree of their habitat impacts (Peterson et al. 2013). Past research indicates that household location has a nonlinear impact on habitat in Wolong and Chitwan. In both sites, local people are traveling farther from their home to collect natural resources than in the past, and thus, human-induced changes in wildlife habitat are occurring deeper inside both of the protected areas over time (He et al. 2009, Carter et al. 2013; Fig. 3A,B). Other studies in the states of Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, USA, also indicate that household location choices have important implications on wildlife and their conservation (Theobald et al. 1997, Peterson et al. 2008). The spatial relationships between household location and wildlife habitat are highly salient to the management of protected areas because these areas may attract human settlement (Wittemyer et al. 2008, but see Hoffman et al. 2011). 2ff7e9595c


0 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page