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| July 4, 2000 | atimes.com | ||
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India/Pakistan
International highway for wildlife By Suman Pradhan KATHMANDU - For years, Nepal has been described as a wildlife conservation success story, having saved major endangered species like the Royal Bengal Tiger and the one-horned rhinoceros. According to latest official estimates, there are 198 tigers and 612 rhinoceroses in the 14 nature parks and conservation areas in the Himalayan kingdom. But critics have also questioned the country's ability to ensure a safe home for these magnificent beasts well into this century as Nepal loses its green cover at an alarming pace. Even as wildlife has multiplied in the nature parks, the country's forest cover shrank drastically during the 1990s from a third to less than a fifth of the total land area of some 147,000 square kilometers. Today, an estimated 29,000 sq km is under green cover. Not much of this is in the protected areas for which the government has earmarked 17 percent of Nepali territory. A bare 5,000 sq km of conservation areas are forested. To many conservationists, the figures underscore an alarming reality. Despite all the years of conservation efforts and some success, the planning was disastrous. ''Our policies had their successes, but mostly they were confined inside the national parks,'' says noted conservation expert Pralad Yonzon, who heads Resources Nepal, a non-profit research organisation based in Kathmandu. ''We did not foresee the consequences of this 'islanding' of national parks.'' However, conservation policy makers now seem to have realized this. The government's Department of Forestry (DoF), early June signed an agreement with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) to build the country's first ''eco-corridor'' in Nepal's far-western corner that would link up nature reserves in Nepal and neighboring India. The Indian government too is party to the project. The decision has been praised by conservationists. ''It is 30 years too late, but at least a positive beginning has been made,'' says Yonzon. ''The skewed planning of the past is being shed, and fresh ideas are being implemented,'' he adds. Under the agreement, Nepal and India would promote the growth of green cover in protected areas on either side of their common border along Nepal's southern Terai flat lands. Initially, the afforestation would be confined to the far western districts of Nepal. According to DoF officials, if everything works as planned, then the entire region encompassing two protected areas of far-western Nepal and three of northern India, will be turned into a safe haven for endangered wildlife within five years. ''We plan to link the Royal Bardiya National Park with the Royal Shuklaphantta Wildlife Reserve in Nepal through these corridors,'' says DoF Director Indra Singh Karki. ''Forest corridors will also be built to link parks inside Nepal with the Dudhwa National Park, Katerniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary and Lagga Bagga Protected areas in India's Uttar Pradesh state bordering Nepal.'' The idea, say DoF and WWF officials, is to allow the free movement of wildlife from one national park to another under the natural cover of trees and foliage. ''It is rather like a highway for animals,'' says WWF program director in Nepal, Ukesh Raj Bhuju. ''By providing freedom of movement from one park to another to protected animals like tigers, elephants and rhinos, we hope to support their habitat and foster their growth,'' he adds. The lack of such a natural highway had been pointed out time and again by conservationists. This is specially evident whenever a one-horned rhinoceros weighing more than two tonnes is to be transported 400 km west from the Chitwan National Park to Bardiya National Park in a fortified truck. Wildlife officials say that the rhinoceros population has grown to such an extent in Chitwan that they have to be relocated to other parks. Many countries, specially in Latin America, have tried this approach successfully. According to Yonzon, Nepal had thought of building such a corridor in the early 1970s, but the plan did not take off. Meanwhile, dense forests, shrubs and foliage that once covered much of the nation's Terai plains, began disappearing as more and more people from the hills moved down to the plains. Today, an estimated third of Nepal's 23 million people live in the Terai on cleared forest land. The problem of over-settlement in forest areas was worsened by the poor quality of undergrowth. ''The quality of forests in the Terai has gone down over the years because the undergrowth, that really nurtures wildlife, has been disappearing at an alarming rate,'' says WWF's Bhuju. (Inter Press Service) |
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