Friday, October 22
The Terai is a narrow strip of land between the Himalayan foothills and the Nepal’s southern border with India. This fertile arc is not only home to Nepal’s densest population
of humans, but also the world’s highest concentration of tigers (as well as endangered elephants and rhinos). The WWF has been working here for decades, and we are coming to the Bardia National Park region of the western Terai to visit WWF joint ventures that incorporate economic development and health into conservation activities. Our WWF hosts include Shubash Rohani, the D.C.-based Eastern Himalayan deputy director (L), Tilak Dhakal, the local project manager (M) and Shiva Raj Bhatta, the Kathmandu-based Terai programs manager.
The Kathmandu departure terminal is swarming with foreign tourists heading to Pokhara (near the Annapurnas) and Lukla (beginning of the Everest base camp trek), but Mitch and I are the only foreigners on the flight to Nepalgunj, a dusty trade town near Bardia. The Terai is notorious for its heat and humidity, but on arrival we find the post-monsoon temperature a bearable 84°F. Along the road that cuts through the Bardia National Park buffer zone (BNPBZ), makeshift houses and plowed field have sprouted where there was only forest and savanna 10 years ago. These settlers migrated from the highlands and squatted on the land during the anarchic period of the Maoist insurrection.
The WWF is connecting 11 separate forest areas threatened by human encroachment in order to create habitat corridors necessary for tiger survival, both along the east-west Terai axis and the north-south connections to adjacent Indian national parks. According to Shubash, the tiger poaching network extends from local hunters to trader-dealers who smuggle the tiger skins and body parts into Tibet and thence into a broad Chinese distribution network. The hunter is paid about $200 to kill a tiger (usually by poisoned bait rather than shooting), but the value escalates through the network such that the ultimate total (retail) value of one tiger is ~$150,000-$200,000. Although some major tiger traders have been nabbed, recent camera trap surveys indicate an unexplained drop in western Terai tiger population. Are tigers still getting poached, or could they be using the new corridors to move into India or adjoining forests? To help address the latter possibility, next week the WWF and wildlife service plan to trap and collar their first tiger to be equipped with a state-of-the-art GPS-enabled tracking device.
The WWF is sponsoring a number of forest community development projects to counteract deforestation and wildlife poaching. Our first stop is in the town of Bhurigaon, where the buffer zone committee has established a solar lighting program. Here, solar lamps are assembled and coupled with a notepad-sized Chinese solar charging panel. Over the last 4 years, the committee has sold 93 of the solar tuki systems, under a microfinance scheme wherein users pay for the tuki system at Rs 200 a month (the average outlay for kerosene lamps) over 19 months. The profits are then plowed into other community projects. Although there is great demand for the tukis, the small monthly
installment payments are not enough to pay for an expansion of the program. This paradox stimulates a broad discussion about product and financing differences with Mitch’s project in Lamjung, and ways to finance expansion, leading to the philosophical question of whether the program’s ultimate goal is to sell products and make money, or to provide a community service and employment.
In the afternoon, we visit the Kothiaghat community health clinic, where we talk with Ram Kumar, a paramedic who has run the clinic since it was first started in 1994 by a park commission that included WWF. The clinic serves 30,000 BNPBZ residents and was effectively the only health care center in the region during during the Maoist insurrection, whe
n local government essentially ceased to function. Ram shows me the spartan 3-room facility and shows me a written report of all cases seen in 2009, charting a variety of interesting diagnoses including malaria, typhoid, and tetanus. The clinic desperately needs at least a part-time physician (MBBS), but Ram has had no success trying to partner with the Nepalgunj medical school (a private, for-profit school).
At the end of the day we go into the park for an elephant ride. The rider climbs a mounting
platform as the mahout backs the elephant against the platform, then the rider steps into a square box, which can seat 4 riders, on the elephant’s back. We ride across the river and into forest glades and tall savanna. We don’t spot any tigers, but Shubash and I have a good chat about doctoring in America and Nepal. After checking into our lodge, we have a leisurely dinner with the park’s Chief Warden and the Commander of the local battalion of the Nepalese army, which provides security detail for the park.
Saturday, October 23
We visit a model village for the WWF’s Population Health Environment (PHE) program, which integrates family planning and healthcare activities together with conservation education. Madhuban is a Tharu village bordering the BNP forest. The Tharu are the indigenous people of the Terai forests, where they emigrated some 400 years ago from parts unknown in India. As hunter-gatherers, the Tharu had a close relationship with the forest, but over time they sold or lost their lands to outsiders, eventually becoming day laborers and sharecroppers to the new land owners. Tilak, who has worked all over Nepal, has come to treasure the Tharu for honesty and unspoiled habits.
We see a blue sign marking the house of the community health volunteer and stop to chat with her. Women like her in villages all over Nepal are the front line of Nepal’s health care system. She has received some basic training in primary care and maternal child health. I’m impressed that her delivery set even includes an air bag to stimulate the newborn’s breathing. The most common visits to her place are for cuts and scrapes, diarrhea and dysentery, and oral rehydration formula.
We visit a number of households in this model village, all of which have incorporated one or more sustainable eco-friendly innovations. These six measures are duly recorded - as checked off or not – on a sign mounted on each house:
1) A toilet
2) A water pump for clean drinking water and (if necessary) a bucket filter to remove excess arsenic from the well water;
3) An improved cooking stove, made of brick and clay. containing an intake pipe to draw in air and an outlet pipe for the exhaust, thereby reducing indoor smoke inhalation and firewood consumption.
4) A biogas oven, to extract methane cooking gas (and organic fertilizer) from animal manure (this is the most expensive improvement)
5) A cement feeding trough, to discourage livestock from foraging near the forest (which disrupts the flora and makes the animals more susceptible to attacks from tigers and leopards).
6) A solar-powered indoor lighting system.
At the very border of the park forest, we are welcomed to the community forest users group meeting house by a group of Tharuni girls bearing flowers. Inside, a behavioral change class about environmental awareness is being led by a youth peer educator. Afterwards, we have a short Q$A session during which it becomes apparent that the Tharus value their role as stewards of their surrounding forests, but are frustrated and threatened by encroaching squatters from the highlands.
After lunch in Kothiaghat on the Karnali River (the largest in Nepal), we take a walk through the forest and find some tiger tracks. In a nearby stream, two Tharuni women are wading and fishing using traditional round nets with baskets atop their heads to store their catch. Talik says that the Tharu love to fish and spend the hot day wallowing in the mud and water. We go through two forest corridors and come out to an opening where a plain marker indicates the border with India. We take this opportunity to visit India multiple times.
We then visit the Khata Community Forest meeting house and clinic in Dhadhuri, where a peer health educator is lecturing about immunizations to a group of new mothers who have brought their babies. Separately, a mobile team is coming through to test water samples for the presence of arsenic or fecal bacteria. All of these activities are part of the WWF’s PHE initiative, and Mitch and I are impressed.
A mother then arrives belatedly with her month-old infant, whom she says is excessively sleepy or lethargic. The health assistant (there is no paramedic at this station) thinks the child may have an umbilical infection and recommends a dose (shot) of gentamicin. I’m alarmed by this prescription and ask to examine the baby – he has no apparent fever, swelling, or tenderness around his belly button. He is sucking well, according to his mother. I’m beginning to wonder whether he might be dehydrated when I feel a warm wetness spreading across my lap – the baby has answered my question in the negative by urinating. So skip the gentamicin, check his temperature periodically, and go to the nearest government health clinic if he worsens or gets feverish.
As we walk back to the lodge, the talk somehow turns to unusual dishes favored by different peoples around the world. Shubash describes one that he learned about on one of his visits to Arunachal Pradesh, in northeastern India: kukuri-bhatti. Here, a dog is force-fed with cooked rice until its belly is completely full. Then the dog is spun around in circles at the end of a chain until it gets nauseated and vomits up the rice – which is then re-cooked. We agree that Shubash’s entry wins the delicacy prize as we go wash up for dinner. After a quick meal, we visit another Tharu village, this time to see a traditional dance performance. The whole village crowds into a courtyard as all the young men, dressed in white shirts and black vests, stand to one side as all the young women, dressed in colorful saris, gather on the other side. In the first dance, two women bow and step rhythmically to an old man beating a waist drum, as the men chant and jump and as the women sing. In the second number, another young woman swivels her hips around a young man beating the drum. Finally, a circle dance – with the guests joining in as the boys and girls clap – closes the evening.
The Terai is a narrow strip of land between the Himalayan foothills and the Nepal’s southern border with India. This fertile arc is not only home to Nepal’s densest population
of humans, but also the world’s highest concentration of tigers (as well as endangered elephants and rhinos). The WWF has been working here for decades, and we are coming to the Bardia National Park region of the western Terai to visit WWF joint ventures that incorporate economic development and health into conservation activities. Our WWF hosts include Shubash Rohani, the D.C.-based Eastern Himalayan deputy director (L), Tilak Dhakal, the local project manager (M) and Shiva Raj Bhatta, the Kathmandu-based Terai programs manager.The Kathmandu departure terminal is swarming with foreign tourists heading to Pokhara (near the Annapurnas) and Lukla (beginning of the Everest base camp trek), but Mitch and I are the only foreigners on the flight to Nepalgunj, a dusty trade town near Bardia. The Terai is notorious for its heat and humidity, but on arrival we find the post-monsoon temperature a bearable 84°F. Along the road that cuts through the Bardia National Park buffer zone (BNPBZ), makeshift houses and plowed field have sprouted where there was only forest and savanna 10 years ago. These settlers migrated from the highlands and squatted on the land during the anarchic period of the Maoist insurrection.
The WWF is connecting 11 separate forest areas threatened by human encroachment in order to create habitat corridors necessary for tiger survival, both along the east-west Terai axis and the north-south connections to adjacent Indian national parks. According to Shubash, the tiger poaching network extends from local hunters to trader-dealers who smuggle the tiger skins and body parts into Tibet and thence into a broad Chinese distribution network. The hunter is paid about $200 to kill a tiger (usually by poisoned bait rather than shooting), but the value escalates through the network such that the ultimate total (retail) value of one tiger is ~$150,000-$200,000. Although some major tiger traders have been nabbed, recent camera trap surveys indicate an unexplained drop in western Terai tiger population. Are tigers still getting poached, or could they be using the new corridors to move into India or adjoining forests? To help address the latter possibility, next week the WWF and wildlife service plan to trap and collar their first tiger to be equipped with a state-of-the-art GPS-enabled tracking device.
The WWF is sponsoring a number of forest community development projects to counteract deforestation and wildlife poaching. Our first stop is in the town of Bhurigaon, where the buffer zone committee has established a solar lighting program. Here, solar lamps are assembled and coupled with a notepad-sized Chinese solar charging panel. Over the last 4 years, the committee has sold 93 of the solar tuki systems, under a microfinance scheme wherein users pay for the tuki system at Rs 200 a month (the average outlay for kerosene lamps) over 19 months. The profits are then plowed into other community projects. Although there is great demand for the tukis, the small monthly
installment payments are not enough to pay for an expansion of the program. This paradox stimulates a broad discussion about product and financing differences with Mitch’s project in Lamjung, and ways to finance expansion, leading to the philosophical question of whether the program’s ultimate goal is to sell products and make money, or to provide a community service and employment.In the afternoon, we visit the Kothiaghat community health clinic, where we talk with Ram Kumar, a paramedic who has run the clinic since it was first started in 1994 by a park commission that included WWF. The clinic serves 30,000 BNPBZ residents and was effectively the only health care center in the region during during the Maoist insurrection, whe
n local government essentially ceased to function. Ram shows me the spartan 3-room facility and shows me a written report of all cases seen in 2009, charting a variety of interesting diagnoses including malaria, typhoid, and tetanus. The clinic desperately needs at least a part-time physician (MBBS), but Ram has had no success trying to partner with the Nepalgunj medical school (a private, for-profit school).At the end of the day we go into the park for an elephant ride. The rider climbs a mounting
platform as the mahout backs the elephant against the platform, then the rider steps into a square box, which can seat 4 riders, on the elephant’s back. We ride across the river and into forest glades and tall savanna. We don’t spot any tigers, but Shubash and I have a good chat about doctoring in America and Nepal. After checking into our lodge, we have a leisurely dinner with the park’s Chief Warden and the Commander of the local battalion of the Nepalese army, which provides security detail for the park.Saturday, October 23
We visit a model village for the WWF’s Population Health Environment (PHE) program, which integrates family planning and healthcare activities together with conservation education. Madhuban is a Tharu village bordering the BNP forest. The Tharu are the indigenous people of the Terai forests, where they emigrated some 400 years ago from parts unknown in India. As hunter-gatherers, the Tharu had a close relationship with the forest, but over time they sold or lost their lands to outsiders, eventually becoming day laborers and sharecroppers to the new land owners. Tilak, who has worked all over Nepal, has come to treasure the Tharu for honesty and unspoiled habits.
We see a blue sign marking the house of the community health volunteer and stop to chat with her. Women like her in villages all over Nepal are the front line of Nepal’s health care system. She has received some basic training in primary care and maternal child health. I’m impressed that her delivery set even includes an air bag to stimulate the newborn’s breathing. The most common visits to her place are for cuts and scrapes, diarrhea and dysentery, and oral rehydration formula.
We visit a number of households in this model village, all of which have incorporated one or more sustainable eco-friendly innovations. These six measures are duly recorded - as checked off or not – on a sign mounted on each house:
1) A toilet
2) A water pump for clean drinking water and (if necessary) a bucket filter to remove excess arsenic from the well water;
3) An improved cooking stove, made of brick and clay. containing an intake pipe to draw in air and an outlet pipe for the exhaust, thereby reducing indoor smoke inhalation and firewood consumption.
4) A biogas oven, to extract methane cooking gas (and organic fertilizer) from animal manure (this is the most expensive improvement)
5) A cement feeding trough, to discourage livestock from foraging near the forest (which disrupts the flora and makes the animals more susceptible to attacks from tigers and leopards).
6) A solar-powered indoor lighting system.
At the very border of the park forest, we are welcomed to the community forest users group meeting house by a group of Tharuni girls bearing flowers. Inside, a behavioral change class about environmental awareness is being led by a youth peer educator. Afterwards, we have a short Q$A session during which it becomes apparent that the Tharus value their role as stewards of their surrounding forests, but are frustrated and threatened by encroaching squatters from the highlands.
After lunch in Kothiaghat on the Karnali River (the largest in Nepal), we take a walk through the forest and find some tiger tracks. In a nearby stream, two Tharuni women are wading and fishing using traditional round nets with baskets atop their heads to store their catch. Talik says that the Tharu love to fish and spend the hot day wallowing in the mud and water. We go through two forest corridors and come out to an opening where a plain marker indicates the border with India. We take this opportunity to visit India multiple times.
We then visit the Khata Community Forest meeting house and clinic in Dhadhuri, where a peer health educator is lecturing about immunizations to a group of new mothers who have brought their babies. Separately, a mobile team is coming through to test water samples for the presence of arsenic or fecal bacteria. All of these activities are part of the WWF’s PHE initiative, and Mitch and I are impressed.
A mother then arrives belatedly with her month-old infant, whom she says is excessively sleepy or lethargic. The health assistant (there is no paramedic at this station) thinks the child may have an umbilical infection and recommends a dose (shot) of gentamicin. I’m alarmed by this prescription and ask to examine the baby – he has no apparent fever, swelling, or tenderness around his belly button. He is sucking well, according to his mother. I’m beginning to wonder whether he might be dehydrated when I feel a warm wetness spreading across my lap – the baby has answered my question in the negative by urinating. So skip the gentamicin, check his temperature periodically, and go to the nearest government health clinic if he worsens or gets feverish.
As we walk back to the lodge, the talk somehow turns to unusual dishes favored by different peoples around the world. Shubash describes one that he learned about on one of his visits to Arunachal Pradesh, in northeastern India: kukuri-bhatti. Here, a dog is force-fed with cooked rice until its belly is completely full. Then the dog is spun around in circles at the end of a chain until it gets nauseated and vomits up the rice – which is then re-cooked. We agree that Shubash’s entry wins the delicacy prize as we go wash up for dinner. After a quick meal, we visit another Tharu village, this time to see a traditional dance performance. The whole village crowds into a courtyard as all the young men, dressed in white shirts and black vests, stand to one side as all the young women, dressed in colorful saris, gather on the other side. In the first dance, two women bow and step rhythmically to an old man beating a waist drum, as the men chant and jump and as the women sing. In the second number, another young woman swivels her hips around a young man beating the drum. Finally, a circle dance – with the guests joining in as the boys and girls clap – closes the evening.
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