Tag Archives: conservation

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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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 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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