Great One-Horned Rhinocerous (Rhinocerous unicornis)

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Renegotiating citizenship: stories of young rhinos in Nepal

Quote:A brief environmental history of Nepal

Nepal has not always focused on biodiversity conservation, especially in the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) which lies along the southern border. Initially sparsely populated only by Indian nationals or indigenous communities, this area was considered uninhabitable by outsiders thanks to its wide expanses of hard to defend land and the presence of malaria-bearing mosquitos (Brown,1996). The area’s inhospitable environment is likely responsible for keeping the British East India Company from officially colonizing Nepal as they worked their way across the sub-continent (Brown, 1996).1 Following the eradication of malaria2 in the Terai during the 1960s, widespread human migration displaced a variety of other species (Mishra, 2008). Floods and crop failures led the Nepalese monarchy to institute emergency relocation programs for poverty-stricken villagers, sending them onto the now-inhabitable TAL. Further anthropogenic pressures arose from the wide-scale immigration of Indian laborers and the return of military personnel from Burma (Myanmar). Due to political unrest, swelling populations, and a lack of structured local government during this period, vast swaths of forests were haphazardly cut or burned for grazing, wood products, and agriculture (Whelpton, 2005). These actions decimated forests; 65% of the land cover was lost, along with a large amount of fauna (Mishra, 2008, p. 55). In what is now Chitwan National Park (henceforth CNP), the number of wild elephants fell below 200 individuals, and rhinos below 65 (GoN, 2015; Yadav et al., 2015).

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