By Knut-Erik Helle
(Text and photo)

World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) wants to take Nepal into a “new paradigm for conservation” and create a “Wildlife heaven in the Himalayas’ shadow”. The international environmental organisation intends to take conservation beyond the boundaries of national parks and into the larger landscape. Whole ecosystems shall be better protected, the forests restored, livelihoods of the local people shall be sustained, the rich biodiversity conserved and moreover give more space for the most charismatic mammals of Nepal. “It all sounds like a poem”, biologist Tirtha Bahadur Shrestha commented, rather dryly. Others have at first glance characterised it as “the dream of every naturalist”. The Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) initiative of WWF is supposed to connect eleven protected areas in the lowlands of Nepal and India in a network of restored corridors. Within the program area covering almost 50.000 square kilometre in total some of the most important agricultural areas of Nepal are found, together with more than six million Nepalese people of witch around half are living below the poverty line of one dollar a day. And the population are growing all to fast. Critics fear that beyond the glossy program wrapping of the Terai Arc Landscape, intended to attract potential donors and partners, there are to big challenges to overcome and conflicting interests that could make the wildlife heaven dream of the naturalists into a nightmare of the local people.


“Guinea pig of WWF”


Professor Per Wegge from the Departmentof Biology and Nature Conservation of the Agricultural University of Norway is among those who think the TAL program could be on the expense of poor local people and that the focus now should be on what is best for Nepal. The scientist has worked in Nepal for many years.

“Local people with protected areas as their neighbours have to live with rhinos, elephants, and big cats and other wild life that destroys their crops, kill domestic animals and are potentially dangerous. The tendency is that the conflict between people and protection interests is escalating,” Wegge says. In his view, Nepal has like many other countries in the South rich in biodiversity, already done a good job managing the endangered species and protecting nature. He fears that more liberty of movement of the troublesome mammals in larger areas outside the national parks will prove to be more trouble for the farmers and increase conflicts.

“To put aside even bigger areas where charismatic mammals have first priority in a country where the need for infrastructure and other development initiative is still huge, will create conflicts and big problems in the future”, the professor adds. He claims that WWF in USA are using Nepal as a guinea pig with their gigantic landscape conservation experiment, instead of trying out the concept at home.
“One can wonder why this is not done much in USA, Canada or Norway, where protected areas can be connected with corridors without million of people living there”, Wegge points out. In most western countries such large scale conservation initiatives are viewed as to expensive, as they imposes far to strict limits on land use, especially with regard to the timber industry. He claims that international environmental organisations and institutions have too much power in a country like Nepal, both through lobby-work and big amounts of money to support their initiatives. Initiatives the environmental authorities with limited budgets finds hard to refuse, as they depend on support from the outside in their conservation efforts.


Disagree on the biology


Dr. Chandra Gurung representing WWF US in their Nepal program claims there is no alternative to TAL.
“We need a new drive in the environmental protection work in Nepal. The lowland of Nepal is a unique global landscape. We want to secure both the bio-diversity and sustainable communities for the local people”, Gurung says. The populations of rhinos are growing too fast for the protected areas to sustain.
“Today we have the choice of either killing animals or expand their habitats”, Gurung adds. He points out that WWF is not in favour of giving new areas formal protection like the national parks, so that the local communities can still use resources from the forests they depend on and also add to their income through eco-tourism. Still, there are quite strict management regimes imposed on these areas and there is a finite number of eco-tourist available to boost income of the local people in the TAL.
“For us it’s imperative that the local communities will have benefits from the TAL program, benefits that outweigh the damages inflicted”, Gurung points out. He also argues that corridors and a landscape approach are important to avoid inbreeding depression of especially rhino and tiger. Professor Per Wegges thinks just that is not necessarily a good argument for implementing the Terai arc landscape program.
“Research has shown that rhinos in Nepal have surprisingly large genetic diversity. If inbreeding proves to become a problem for a species, the problem may be solved by continuing to trans-locate individual animals from one area to another, he argues. He thinks the landscape corridor approach will be far more costly and in addition creates to many problems. A far cheaper alternative is scientific based management of the populations within the protected areas, with for example active regulation of the populations through controlled hunting and curbing of excess animals that venture outside the limits of the parks, according to Wegge.


Worried about poaching


Poaching is another challenge for the TAL program, that worries Ram Prit Yadev, who has been working for 30 years to protect the nature of Nepal. Now he work for King Mahendra Trust For Nature Conservation. Yadev thinks TAL is a “very ambitious project” that will face many difficult practical challenges, but is in principle positive to the initiative. He still worry that more freedom of movement for the rhino will make the job easier for the poachers and far more difficult for the authorities that has limited resources to fight illegal hunting. Especially in the Royal National park of Chitwan rhino poaching are a big problem, with 37 rhinos killed in 2002. The hunt for the poachers depend today on a well developed and managed network of local informers. And already around one forth of the total expenses of Department of National Parks and Wild life Conservation to the Royal National Army, who provides the protection of the national parks of Nepal. To both maintain a network of local informers and in addition provide protection throughout the TAL may be difficult challenge.
Dr. Chandra Gurung claims that poaching will limit it self if it is in the interest of the local communities to protect the diversity in their communities forests, if the benefits prove to be interesting enough. He agrees that there isn’t any possibility to involve the army in the whole TAL. The pressing question is if the effort of local communities is enough to limit poaching.


The co-ordination challenge


WWF have had problems to “sell” the TAL program to the 15 other donor agencies working within the area, Dr. Chandra Gurung informs. In order to be successfully implemented, all other land use projects must in accordance with the overall conservation vision of the TAL.
“After we signed an agreement with the Ministry of Forest and soil Conservation it has been much easier to sell our TAL program. The program is to big and we don’t have the resources to do everything alone, Gurung states. Still he admits there are big co-ordination challenges in the years ahead. For example, The Department of life stock have a plan to promote goat farming in the Terai, but with to many goats, there will not be much left of the TAL-corridors, according to Gurung. Also the millions of cattle in the Terai pose a threat to the corridors and must be limited. The problem is that the local Tharu people regards wealth in number of cattle and not in the productivity of their life stock. Moreover, activities as road construction, agriculture development, and much more must be in coherence with the TAL-initiative. Thus there are quite a few departments and ministries in Nepal that must take TAL and the Ministry of Forest and soil Conservation into consideration when planning their activities. Dr. Tirtha Bahadur Shrestha has worked in Ministry of Forest and soil Conservation, and has some serious doubt concerning his old employers co-ordinating abilities. He claims they even face problems co-ordinating the activities among their own departments.
“The ministry is like the tiger, it sticks to its habitat and don’t like anyone else sneaking around”, Shrestha elaborates. Without proper co-ordination of activities and different initiatives he thinks that the TAL program “will not work at all”.


The struggle of a community


Dr. Tirtha Bahadur Shrestha finds that land itself is the main limiting factor concerning new conservation efforts in Nepal, where there must be a balance between the needs and interests of the people, and the wildlife conservation efforts. In addition people must be satisfied.
“The role and the potential problems of the people in the Terai Ark Landscape must be clearly identified, and one important question is how to compensate them. All of them can’t be game scouts for tourists”, Shrestha points out. A local farmer living close to Royal Bardia National Park tells us he and the local community faces many problems both from the “flagship species” as WWF call them and other wildlife from the park. In addition, the insurgency and tight security measures imposed by the army has made it even more difficult to be a farmer.
“All of us are worried about the drop in income. The wild boar is a disaster for the potato crops. Other animals like deer and rhinos also cause a lot of damage. This is an increasing problem. In order to protect our crops we have to stay all night in our watchtowers”, Hariram Chaudhary explains. But due to the insurgency the farmers are not allowed to use their watchtowers, and the wildlife can help themselves to their crops undisturbed. The agricultural production in the area has dropped together with the income.
“I get very angry when I find part of my field destroyed, but there is not much for us to do”, Chaudhary says. He think it would be a good idea if the farmers where allowed to kill some excess animals outside the park. But the park authorities are very reluctant to give any licenses to kill animals that damage the crops of the local communities. A villager that killed a deer in outrage outside the park boundaries got a seven years jail sentence. With the insurgency the last two years the number of tourist providing both income to the national park and the local communities have dropped dramatically. Two years ago 9950 tourists visited Bardia, but from last June 2002 until January 2003 only 604 tourists have visited the park. For the local communities this means economical disaster, as half of the revenues of the park goes to the local communities. Today there is not enough money generated by the park to give farmers compensation for loss of crops or even support the victims attacked by tiger, rhino or leopard. The difficult times have forced many villagers over the border to India in order to find work. “We have a great hope there will be peace, that will help to restore some of our income”, Hariram Chaudhary says.


A long way to go


Dr. Chandra Gurung admits it will take a long time to convince the local communities in the area that the benefits of the Terai Arc Lanscape program will outweigh possible loss of crops and domestic animals. WWF want to take local farmers on study tours, to areas where the communities prosper from their community forests with tourist friendly wildlife. He also points out that the TAL program will not be successful if the insurgency continues. Without peace there will not be enough tourists around to provide income, and recent study indicates that poaching and illegal logging has increased during the war. Gurung also thinks that Nepal has a lot more potential when it comes to tourism.
“Nepal suffers from weak marketing of tourism and lack of vision. We need to learn from countries like Costa Rica and Sri Lanka”, he says.
With regard to future need of more agricultural land Gurung thinks that more intensive and effective agricultural practices will limit the need of more farmland in the Terai. But still there is already need for more land. According to WWF 10.000 families that encroached 6500 hectare of forest areas in the Basanta corridor have been removed by the District Forest Office in order to clear the way for the “wildlife heaven” of Nepal. In the buffer zone of Bardia national Park there are also landless Tharu families living. They are just recently freed from their bounded labour “contracts”, and used to live and work more or less as slaves for big landowners. They also face an uncertain future, and will have to move to somewhere else to make room for conservation.

“We are in a starting phase where we are still learning. The Terai Arc may be called an experiment, where some trials and errors will have to be faced before we find the best practical solutions”, the WWF USA country representative elaborates. According to Gurung it could take up to ten years before the Terai Arc Landscapes becomes the “wildlife heaven” the WWF, foreign donors and the conservation authorities want it to be. The Terai Arc conservation initiative is supported by USAID, Save the Tiger Fund (US), United States Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS), Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and several country branches of WWF.

Terai Arc Landscape facts

* Home to three of the most endangered species in the world, tiger, greater one-horned rhinoceros and the Asiatic elephant.

* Important for species like the sloth bear, the gangetic dolphin, the gharial crocodile, the swamp deer, Hispid hare, the Bengal florican and swamp partridge. All together 86 species of mammals live in the area, 550 species of birds, 47 species of herpeto-fauna, 126 species of fish, and over 2100 species of flowering plants.

* Covers 49.500 square kilometre along the Nepal and India border, with 11 protected areas in total from the Bagmati river in the east of Nepal to Yamuna river in the west of India.

* Wildlife population (in Nepal): About 125 breeding tigers, 600 rhinos and 120 elephants.

* The program will focus the efforts in five critical areas categorized as to corridors (Basanta and Bardia-Katarnia) and three bottlenecks (Mahadevpuri in Banke, Lamahi in Dang and Divan in Palpa).


Copyright (c) 2003, NEFEJ/Knut-Erik Helle. This article is previously published in the nepalese magazine Haka Haki (May 2003) and The Kathmandu Post (19. and 20. May 2003).