Category Archives: Nature

Tusker tussle at Nepal elephant polo world champs

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Photo: AFP, Prakash Mathema

by Frankie Taggart

The original version of this article was published by AFP on December 9, 2011. You can read it here.

A portly consultant takes an inch-perfect pass from a balding banker, slots the ball home with clinical precision and punches the air with both arms, David Beckham style.
This is “champagne polo”, the commentator yells, but champagne polo with a difference, for the steed behind the winning goal weighs several tonnes and has just let go of a dung pile which looks the size of a small family car.
We are approaching the climax of the World Elephant Polo Championships, with players from across the globe gathering in a remote airfield in southern Nepal for a week of one of the most elite and glamorous sports around.
“Some players are looking very tired out there,” says Peter Prentice, a Hong Kong-based veteran of the tournament who chairs the World Elephant Polo Association and doubles up as a rather urbane commentator.
“I recommend a few repetitions of light weights to warm down and certainly a half a Carlsberg is about the right weight to relax those weary muscles.
“Seven to ten reps should do it, followed by a few lighter reps. A sauvignon blanc and then a chablis over ice or two should do the trick.”
Meanwhile a former Miss Nepal is told she is holding her stick the wrong way around.
Thus the tone is set for the exclusive business of elephant polo, a week of of fine wine, good food and socialising in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, home to Bengal tigers, rhinos and, for one week a year, playboys and aristocrats.
The annual event, hosted by the Tiger Tops jungle resort, has attracted models, celebrities and other glitterati over the years, including former Beatle Ringo Starr and comedians Billy Connolly and Max Boyce.
But at the business end of the tournament the participants take their sport very seriously indeed.

The elephants are driven by trainers who control them with oral commands and foot pressure (AFP, Prakash Mathema)

“Players do look to the umpire to make the right decisions and don’t take it lightly if a decision doesn’t go their way,” says Dubai-based former Gurkha and logistics consultant Nigel Lea, 33, who got his eye in by swinging his mallet from the roof of a Land Rover Discovery in the desert.
“But the joy of elephant polo is that because you are all together as a community that only sees each other once a year, 30 seconds after walking off the pitch we calm down, shake hands and have a beer together.”
It is easy to understand why the players do not like to go home empty-handed — the package per person is around the $3,500 mark for a week and the entry fee for each team works out at an eye-watering $10,000.
“I don’t think it’s a sport for posh people,” Lea says, however. “Some people here have a lot of money, some people can hardly rub two coppers together.”
Elephant polo was dreamt up 30 years ago over drinks at a Swiss ski resort and is based on the rules of horse polo, with a smaller pitch to cater for the less energetic steeds.
But thinking you’ll be any good on an elephant just because you can ride a horse is rather like assuming you’ll be able to master the controls of a Sherman tank after taking a cycling proficiency course.
Two teams of four players in pith helmets sit astride elephants controlled by mahouts, or trainers, who drive them on using oral commands and pressure from their feet.
Communication is the main problem as the mahouts speak only Nepali, as do their mounts, who are thought to be able to understand about 30 words.
Players carry sticks up to eight feet (2.5 metres) long to hit the ball towards the opposing goal, with each game comprising two 10-minute chukkas.
The list of enthusiasts is illustrious. Cheering from the sidelines this year is Colonel Raj Kalaan, who played with the Indian Polo team for 20 years, owns the Haryana Polo Club near Delhi and commanded India’s 61st Cavalry.
Local people also turn up in their thousands every year to cheer on a team put together by the park warden and his staff, who work with elephants every day and are often among the top performers.
This year’s title was successfully defended by a team led by 72-year-old Scotsman James Manclark, a horse polo player and former Olympic tobogganist who invented the elephant version over a drink with Jim Edwards, a pioneer of eco-tourism in Nepal.
Elephant polo is not without its detractors, chief among them animal welfare groups who have campaigned against the sport in India.
It is immediately obvious, however, that elephant welfare is the top priority at Tiger Tops and the animals’ treatment is reminiscent of the pampering that thoroughbred racehorses enjoy.
The ever-attentive mahouts lovingly clean and care for their mounts, treating them at the end of each match to molasses sandwiches to keep their strength up.

The elephants are fed molasses sandwiches keep their strength up (AFP, Prakash Mathema)

Conservation is also a key issue for Tiger Tops and the WEPA, which has contributed thousands of pounds towards animal welfare and other schemes benefiting Nepal over the years.
“If you see how they are here, you can see they are happy and in their natural habitat,” said Stine Edwards, captain of the all-women Tiger Tops Tigresses team, which ended the tournament with an impressive third place.
Stine’s husband Kristjan Edwards was born and raised in Nepal, speaks Nepali as a first language and has the advantage of having spent most of his life on the back on an elephant.
“An elephant will never do anything it doesn’t want to do,” says Stine. “They (the senior players) all have their own elephants and they would never do anything which would not be good for their elephants.”
The intellect of the elephants is often underestimated, according to the players, who say it obvious their mounts know what they are doing on the field.
“They are so bright. One year we had an elephant who would complain when you missed the ball,” says Stine, mimmicking the animal’s trumpeting raised trunk with an arm.
“He’d be saying: ‘You — can’t you just hit the ball? I’m on a run here!’”

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Nepal children to track secretive snow leopard

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Snow leopard Nita with one of her cubs in the Himalayan Padmaja Naidu Zoological Park in Darjeeling (AFP, Diptendu Dutta)

UPDATE on November 18, 2001: Three snow leopards have been spotted in the lower areas of Mustang district in western Nepal, according to the Kathmandu Post – not by one of the children, but by an expert.
“I saw a small number of Himalayan Blue sheep grazing around the grassland near Taprang (link is to a time-lapse video) in Jarkot area… I waited for a while and moved my eyes around, and suddenly I saw a snow leopard coming towards the pasture from the stream nearby,” said Bikram Shrestha, field biologist and a member of the census team. “I was elated and took numerous pictures of the animal.”
Here is one of his pics:

A rare glimpse of the elusive snow leopard in Mustang district (photo: Bikram Shrestha)

 

by Frankie Taggart

This article is based on a shorter version I wrote for AFP. See the original, published on October 8, 2011, here.

Conservationists in Nepal have enlisted an army of school children to record the movements of the mysterious snow leopard, one of the most elusive predators in the world, a scientist said Tuesday.
Experts believe just 500 adults survive in the Himalayan nation, and few can claim ever to have seen the secretive, solitary “mountain ghost”, which lives 5,000 to 6,000 metres (16,500 to 20,000 ft) above sea level.
“Snow leopards are inherently rare, and also elusive in the sense that they are active during dusk and dawn, so few people, including biologists, have seen a snow leopard to date,” said Som Ale of the US-based Snow Leopard Conservancy.
The group has enlisted children from schools in the leopard’s habitat in Mustang, in Nepal’s mountainous northern frontier, who will work in pairs to instal and monitor digital cameras to count the endangered species.
The census, due to be carried out over two months in winter, will give scientists a more accurate idea of numbers in Nepal than more primitive techniques, including recording tracks and collecting droppings.
Although the Snow Leopard Conservancy used camera traps on a study in India six years ago, the group says this is the first survey of a large predator anywhere in the world by local communities who are not paid conservation experts.
“In parts of Africa, lions may be monitored by local people but they are well paid professional guides,” Ale told AFP.
Remote camera trapping, which Som describes as “an interesting but taxing venture”, is increasingly seen as the best way to get an accurate picture of the big cat’s population — but it is by no means a guaranteed technique.
“To be successful, one must place cameras on rugged terrain and trails snow leopards frequent. Our cameras in Mustang may or may not catch images of snow leopards which may depend on so many other factors besides the location — for instance, movement of prey, snowfall and all that,” Som said.
The pupils will be trained to set up digital cameras that take infra-red images and operate in sub-zero temperatures to areas where snow leopards would be expected to visit, automatically taking images of any warm-bodied animal that happens to pass by.
Each snow leopard has its own unique pattern and researchers match the photographed animal’s fur against pictures taken earlier in the survey or from previous surveys.
“Capture-mark-recapture” algorithms and computers are used to estimate the number of snow leopards present within the area surveyed.
The snow leopard is protected in Nepal by an act of parliament dating back to the 1970s which provides for penalties of up to 100,000 rupees ($1,300) and up to 15 years in jail for poachers and traders of its pelt and bones.
There are an estimated 4,500 to 7,000 of the big cats left in the wild. But that population is spread across 12 countries and nearly 775,000 square miles.
This habitat includes some of the most remote regions of the world, from Afghanistan, across the Himalayas, to Lake Baikal in south central Russia.
The figure is only a “best guess” based largely upon tracks, droppings and crude computer-generated habitat models.
“Clearly, if we are to ensure a future for this charismatic species, we need to know far more about its distribution and population trend in the 12 countries where snow leopards range,” Snow Leopard Conservancy says on its website.
“That requires monitoring their populations in representative areas and habitats to determine their current and future status. Are we dealing with the worst-case scenario of widespread, declining numbers, or are populations stable and even possibly increasing in some places?”
Ale himself is one of the few people in the world lucky enough to have come face to face with the animal.
The biologist photographed a snow leopard in 2004 on the southern slopes of Mount Everest, the first time it had been spotted there for more than 40 years, by observing the behaviour of its prey, a wild goat called the Himalayan tahr.
“If one knows where to look, one can sight snow leopard. In Everest, I saw snow leopard six times during my PhD study — all because my PhD work was to find out suitable techniques to study the elusive predator,” he said.

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The healthy diners saving Nepal’s vultures

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Vultures chow down

Vultures feeding on carcasses treated with diclofenac die of kidney failure (AFP/BIRD CONSERVATION NEPAL/File, Anand Chaudhary)

Nepal’s vultures — decimated by medicine fed to the livestock they call dinner — are making a comeback thanks to their own chain of healthy-eating restaurants.
The drug-free diners have been set up across the country over the last four years to counter the use of diclofenac, a painkiller commonly administered to the cattle that are a mainstay of the scavengers’ diet.
The latest, launched last year near the Annapurna mountain range in central Nepal, has led to a five-fold increase in the local population of the critically endangered bird, according to figures unearthed by my AFP colleague Deepak Adhikari this week.

See his story published by AFP on October 26 here.

Before the turn of the century, an estimated 300,000 vultures cruised the Nepali skies, but scientific studies say their numbers declined by more than 90 percent in just a few years.
Vultures feeding on carcasses treated with diclofenac die of kidney failure, often within 24 hours, says Bird Conservation Nepal.
Let’s face it – vultures aren’t the best loved species in the bird kingdom. Intrinsically linked as they are with death, the sight of this falconiformes circling above is about as welcome as a visit by the Grim Reaper at a nursing home.
And there is something distinctly unvirtuous about the idea of picking on the bones of the carcass of some poor soul which has met its end. Better the ferocious majesty of the eagle which swoops, kills and deserves its prey than the slavering shadenfreude of the vulture.
Even its name has become a staple insult in the English language to describe someone who benefits from another’s misfortune.
So should we not celebrate its demise? Well, no.
The loss of a major scavenger – apart from being a zoological tragedy – is bad news for all of us.
In Nepal the demise of the vulture has led to a rise in rotting carcasses and a consequent increase in feral dogs and the spread of disease.
Yes, vultures are… well… vultures - but they also do a good job in protecting us from rabies, anthrax and tuberculosis.
BCN came up with the idea of “restaurants” where the birds could eat uncontaminated carrion, the latest of them set up in Kaski district.

The drug-free diners have led to a five-fold increase in the local population of the critically endangered bird (AFP/BIRD CONSERVATION NEPAL/File, Bird Conservation Nepal)

In Hindu-majority Nepal, cows are considered sacred and killing them is strictly prohibited.
BCN buys old and terminally ill cattle and takes the animals to the restaurants’ farms in community-owned forests where they are treated, if needed, with another, vulture-friendly painkiller.
They are allowed to die naturally and, once declared free of diclofenac, are skinned and taken to nearby jungle where they are left out to become the vultures’ main course.
With around 860 bird species in a landscape that varies from fertile, semi-tropical plains to snowy Himalayan peaks, Nepal is a paradise for bird watchers.
It now has six vulture restaurants, and BCN says one project set up two years ago at Gaidahawa Lake, in the southern Terai plains, has seen numbers increase from fewer than 40 to as high as 282 at meal times.

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Leopard drags away and eats toddler in Nepal

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We reported yesterday on a man-eating leopard that dragged away and devoured a four-year-old boy in Nepal, the third victim from the same remote village in just four months.
You can read our report in the Daily Telegraph here.
It is possible that one killer cat may be stalking Bela village from its jungle lair in the mountains of central Nepal and could be responsible for all three deaths, the police told our reporter Phanindra Dahal.
“A leopard took away a four-year-old boy from his house at 6:20pm (1235 GMT) on Sunday,” said Surendra Prasad Mainali, the deputy superintendent of police  for the district of Kavre, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Kathmandu.
“He was playing inside his house. The police and locals conducted a search until midnight and found his dead body inside a forest 15 kilometres away.
“The man-eater leopard has not been seen in the village since the incident.”
Mainali said leopards — an endangered animal in Nepal — had attacked numerous villagers in recent months and were increasingly targeting children.
Police have adopted a shoot-to-kill policy for any leopards seen encroaching on the territory of the Bela residents.
The incident put me in mind of another story we broke last month about 15 Nepalese villagers, including a 14-year-old, who were arrested for eating a leopard in the belief that the meat could guard against gout.
There has been no survey in Nepal of the population size but estimates by conservationists put the number of leopards in the Chitwan and Bardia national parks in the Terai at up to 125.
Conservationists say poaching for skins and body parts increased during the last five years of the Maoist rebellion when parks were poorly protected.
But improved conservation of forests since then has seen the population burgeoning.
Clearly Nepal has a problem where humans and leopards meet – and the cats usually seem to get the upper hand in direct conflict situations, with studies showing some 270 people were killed by the animal in the ten years to 2004.
There have been 106 leopard deaths at the hand of humans during the same period. (These figures, of course, are about face-to-face encounters. They do not take into account the many hundreds of leopards killed by deforestation, loss of habitat and poaching.)
Despite the fragile conservation status of the Panthera pardus in Nepal, it isn’t held in the same esteem as, say, Bengal tigers. The reason for this is that leopards are often seen, with some justification, as dangerous pests. They visit human settlements across Nepal frequently, killing domesticated animals and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

A leopard is seen in captivity in 2010 (AFP/File, Gianluigi Guercia)

They have also been known to attack as far in as the suburbs of Kathmandu.
Naturalists say that the reason is paradoxically Nepal’s success in protecting its forests. At the top of the food chain, the leopard is being driven out of its natural hunting ground by competition or depleting prey.
They generally avoid people if they can, but when they get hungry they have been known to attack children, especially older or injured leopards that can’t hunt traditional prey.
Another reason that encounters often end in tears or worse is that most locals panic when they see a leopard, and think it is a man-eating tiger, Shanta Raj Jnawali at the National Trust of Nature Conservation told the Nepali Times.
The leopard then gets spooked and tries to defend itself.
So what should you do if you are pottering around in your kitchen and you come face-to-face with a hungry leopard who thinks he might just be in with a chance of a free lunch?
“If you see a leopard, you should not disturb the animal,” advises Jnawali. “Walk out of the house, lock it and wait for the rescue team.”
Hmmm… sounds like the kind of advice that easier said than done. But suppress that urge to flap your arms around and holler – one day it might just save your life.

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Nepal scientists ‘poo-print’ tigers

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Scientists in Nepal are building a DNA database of Bengal tigers with a unique genetic fingerprint from their faeces (AFP/File, Devendra Man Singh)

 
by Frankie Taggart
 
This article was first pubished by AFP on October 21, 2011. See the original here.
 
Scientists in Nepal are to build up the world’s first national DNA database of the endangered Bengal tiger by collecting and recording a unique genetic fingerprint from each adult’s faeces.
Conservationists have relied in the past on the old-fashioned technique of photographing the big cat and recording footprints to study the population, said to number little over 100 adults in Nepal.
But the Center for Molecular Dynamics Nepal (CMDN) told AFP a two-year Tiger Genome Project would gather a raft of vital behavioural and genetic information to help conservationists better understand the species.
“The whole idea is to scoop all the poop and get a genetic database of all the tigers in Nepal,” said CMND researcher Diwesh Karmacharya.
Teams from the centre will fan out in four national parks in Nepal’s Terai southern plains, the main habitat of the Royal Bengal tiger, armed with sample bags.
The project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development, is part of a Nepalese effort to double its population of Royal Bengal tigers.
The animals once roamed the country’s southern plains in large numbers but have been depleted by poaching and the destruction of their habitat.
“In the past they used to use pugmarks — which are the footprints — and then they started using individual cameras,” said Karmacharya. “There was a census done in 2009 and in 2010 and both used camera trapping.
“They both worked really well but the information you get is not too detailed. You won’t be able to tell more than how many tigers you have in the area of the survey.”
He said faeces would enable researchers to glean the sex of individuals as well as the areas they had come from and a whole host of behavioural information, such as breeding habits.
Karmacharya said that although other countries such as India had collected genetic information on Bengal tigers in the past, this would be the first systematic survey of a country’s entire population.
“The idea is to figure out whether the current boundaries are effective in housing a healthy genetic population of tigers,” he said.
The information will also help assess the percentage of males and females and whether tigers found dead in the border areas were from Nepal or India.
The results will be shared with experts worldwide through scientific publications and presentations, USAID said.
A WWF survey carried out in 2008 found just 121 adult tigers of breeding age in the country.
Experts say poverty and political instability in Nepal have created ideal conditions for poachers who kill the animals for their skin, meat and bones, which are highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine.
Wildlife experts say a single tiger skin is traded for around $1,000 in Nepalese markets but at least $10,000 internationally.
The WWF says tigers worldwide are in serious danger of becoming extinct in the wild. During the last 100 years their numbers have collapsed by 95 percent, from 100,000 in 1900 to around 3,200.

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Nepal considers Eve-rest rooms for climbers caught short

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Should Everest's South Base Camp get public toilets? (photo courtesy: tourochina.co.uk)

We’ve all been there: the stomach starts gurgling as last night’s curry reminds you it has yet to complete its epic voyage through you.
But you are on a remote expedition of your own, and not exactly best placed to head for the nearest toilet block, whistling the Marseillaise, with copy of the Racing Post tucked under your arm.
You frantically look for signs to the public conveniences and then remember you are more than 29,000 feet above sea level, on the roof of the earth, and more likely to bump into a snow leopard than a palatial toilet block with pristine marble floors and gold taps.
This is the dilemma faced by the thousands of trekkers who brave the elements to head to Everest every year, minds preoccupied more with the challenge of ascending the world’s tallest mountain than what the toilet paper will be like when they get there.
There is only one answer on such occasions. Well, two: you can always bring a cork with you, I suppose.
For the rest of us, there is no option, you have to go where you are. Polite trekkers bring a contingency with them, the euphemistically-named “expedition can”, which sounds more like a sports drink than a repository for your waste.
But not all trekkers are polite, and this is becoming a real problem for the groups who are trying to keep Everest nice for the rest of us.
A partial solution may be in the offing, however.  
Environmental group Eco Himal has suggested that the Nepal government consider installing portable toilets at Everest’s South Base Camp.
Expeditions would do a better job of keeping the place clean if they and their porters had somewhere civilised to go when nature called, Eco Himal says.
My report for AFP can be read on the Daily Telegraph’s website, here.
Everest is littered with the detritus of past expeditions, including human waste and mountaineers’ corpses, which can take decades to decompose because of the extreme cold.
There is no official figure on how much trash has been left on the mountain, but the debris of 50 years of climbing has given Everest the name of the world’s highest dumpster.
The privately-funded Eco Everest Expedition, a Nepal-based coalition of environmentalists campaigning to keep the mountain clean, has collected more than 13 tonnes of garbage, 400 kilos of human waste and four bodies since 2008.
Nepal’s Sherpa people, who are Buddhists and believed to be of Tibetan origin, make up most of the population in the Everest region and have long revered the world’s highest peak as sacred.
I spoke to Wangchhu Sherpa, of the Everest Sumiteers Association in Kathmandu today. He believes at least 10 tonnes of rubbish remain on the mountain and he feels a government blacklist for tour groups who cannot account for all their belongings when they return from Everest – including containers of human waste – might be a better idea than a few toilets at base camp.
But are we realistic to expect these rules to enforced?
With the financial crisis deepening around the world, we habitually – and somewhat myopically – line up the environment as the first casualty of our cost-cutting.
In one of the poorest countries on earth, it seems unlikely that successive governments are going to want to pay for hundreds of inspectors to ensure people are looking after Everest.
The simple solution, as with so many environmental issues, is that people grow up and realise that it is incumbent on them, not governments, police or the courts, to ensure that our planet is looked after.

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Scientists ‘confirm Yeti exists’ – but is Russian

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Wayne Rooney: not thought to be interested in the yeti (pic supplied to AFP)

Before I arrived here in Kathmandu I boasted that my first big story would be tracking down the elusive yeti – the big, grumpy, hairy creature of legend (myth?) which has gripped the imaginations of Western adventurers and mountaineers for decades.
But I appear to have been scooped by my own colleagues.
AFP‘s Moscow bureau ran a story today saying the Kemerovo region in the south of Siberia is claiming to have found ”indisputable proof” of the existence of the Abominable Snowman in its remote mountains.
You can read the full story here but the jist is that the region’s local government has posted a statement on its website saying footprints and possibly even hair samples belonging to the yeti were found on a research trip.
Kemerovo’s governor had invited researchers from the US, Canada, and a few other countries to share stories of encounters with the Yeti at a conference which was to include an expedition to putative yeti territory.
“During the expedition to the Azasskaya cave, conference participants gathered indisputable proof that the Shoria mountains are inhabited by the ‘Snow Man’,” the statement said.
“They found his footprints, his supposed bed, and various markers with which the yeti marks his territory,” the statement said. 
I’m not prepared to concede the scoop to my Russian colleagues quite yet, though.
Only three years ago our bureau here reported on a team of Japanese adventurers who said they had discovered eight-inch (20cm) footprints they believed were made by the yeti.
They didn’t get the creature on film, surprise surprise, but the team leader Yoshiteru Takahashi told us: “Myself and other team members have been coming to the Himalayas for years and we can recognise bear, deer, wolf and snow leopard prints and it was none of those.
“We remain convinced it is real. The footprints and the stories the locals tell make us sure that it is not imaginary.”
They took snaps of the footprints which you can see on the Yeti Project Japan website (it’s in Japanese, I’m afraid).
Indeed, most tales of yeti sightings emanate from the Himalayas, not Siberia, and I smell a bit of opportunistic PR in this latest sighting.
I imagine the tourism board of Kemerovo – a barren, coal and metal mining region in the middle of nowhere - were not unhappy with the yeti’s appearance in their hills.
I have my own theory, of course. I don’t think the Abominable Snowman is to be found in Nepal or Russia. I imagine after decades of growling at sherpas but running off at the first sign of a camera he has probably retired with the missus to Scotland.
Where he can be found most afternoons playing golf with the Loch Ness Monster.

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Nepal villagers use herbal remedy on unruly rhinos

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A one-horned rhinoceros and its cub stand in the Meghauli Chitwan forest, some 200 km southwest of Kathmandu. Photo: Frankie Taggart

by Frankie Taggart

Note: This is based on my article originally published by AFP on October 3, 2011. Read it here.

It can soothe a troubled mind and calm a rebellious gut, but a remote Nepalese forest community has discovered another unlikely use for camomile — it scares away unruly rhinos.
The ethnic Tharu people who live beneath the southern foothills of the Himalayas have been plagued for generations by the one-horned rhinoceros, which ventures onto their land, trampling crops and sometimes injuring villagers.
Loath to use violence to keep the endangered grazing species at bay, these peace-loving people discovered that planting camomile on the edge of the forest would ward off their nuisance neighbours, who hate the smell.
“It works as barrier. Because of the peculiar smell of this unpalatable (herb)… it helps to stop wildlife from entering farmland. It works not only for rhinos but also other herbivores,” said Suman Bhattarai, of the Partnership for Rhino Conservation, which helps Nepalis live side-by-side with the rhino.
The Tharu are said to be direct descendants of Buddha and to have lived for centuries in the forests of the Terai, a narrow strip of land which extends for 550 miles along the southern border of Nepal.
“Animals from the nearby buffer zone area of the Bardia National Park used to enter our farmland and destroy huge amount of crops. We started this work with support from the national park and WWF Nepal,” community leader Mangal Tharu Yogi told the Kathmandu Post.

A one-horned rhinoceros and its cub head for the Rapti river in Meghauli village. Photo: Frankie Taggart

While large herbivores baulk at the pungent odour, camomile is used to treat a wide variety of human complaints, including indigestion, heartburn and vertigo.
Bhattarai said tribespeople who might not be inclined to spend time growing a crop they cannot eat should think of selling it as a herbal remedy as well as using it as a deterrent.
“But in Nepal, people are not getting these multiple benefits,” Bhattarai told me. “It is (only) being grown for ‘fence’ purposes in some areas in order to reduce crop raiding.”
Thousands of greater one-horned rhinos, also known as the Indian rhinoceros, once roamed Nepal and northern India but their numbers have plunged over the past century due to poaching and human encroachment of their habitat.
The population is recovering after a dramatic plunge in numbers during the 1996-2006 civil war, when soldiers deployed to prevent poaching left to fight a guerrilla insurgency.
Wildlife experts spent a month earlier this year conducting an exhaustive survey and counted 534 rhinos in Nepal’s southern forests – 99 more than when the last such study was carried out in 2008.
The animals are poached for their horns, which are prized for their reputed medicinal qualities in China and southeast Asia.
A single horn can sell for tens of thousands of dollars on the international black market, and impoverished Nepal’s porous borders, weak law enforcement and proximity to China have made the country a hub for the illegal trade.
Rhino poaching in Nepal carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail.

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