WCS Assists Afghanistan In Releasing Its First-Ever List of Protected Species
By Fran Hackett
Kabul, Afghanistan – The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today that the Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency (NEPA), in an effort to safeguard its natural heritage, has released the country’s first-ever list of protected species now banned from hunting or harvest.
The wide-ranging list of endangered and threatened species includes such well known wildlife as snow leopards, wolves, and brown bears, but also lesser-known species such as the paghman salamander, goitered gazelle, and Himalayan elm tree.
The list, consisting of 20 mammals, seven birds, four plants, and a single amphibian and insect, provides legal protection to Afghanistan’s wildlife, which have been devastated by more than 30 years of conflict.
NEPA, in partnership with the USAID-funded* Wildlife Conservation Society, the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock, and KabulUniversity created the Afghanistan Wildlife Executive Committee (AWEC) to facilitate the listing process. In July 2008, AWEC began evaluations of species such as the snow leopard, Marco Polo sheep, and Asiatic black bear. To make status determinations, AWEC and WCS worked with world-experts to obtain the most recent and accurate information available for Afghanistan and the region, and then evaluated those data using scientific criteria established by the global authority on species listing – the IUCN Red List. By the end of 2009, WCS says the list may be expanded to as many as 70 species.
“The Wildlife Conservation Society commends the Afghanistan’s National Environment Protection Agency for showing a continued commitment to conserving its natural heritage – even during these challenging times,” said Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, President and CEO of WCS. “WCS believes that conservation can often serve as diplomacy, and we are optimistic that this commitment to conservation will benefit all of Afghanistan’s people.”
In Afghanistan, species like the snow leopard are under pressure from excessive hunting, loss of key habitat and illegal trade. Snow leopard pelts for sale in tourist shops can go for as much as $1,500 each. International trade in species like the snow leopard is illegal under international law because it is globally endangered. Now that the snow leopard is protected under Afghan law, it is also illegal for Afghan nationals or internationals to hunt or trade the species within Afghanistan.
The protected species list also comes at a critical time for Afghanistan’s wild species. The Presidential Decree banning hunting in the country expired in March 2009. Only one week ago, it would have been legal for any person to kill an endangered species like the snow leopard in Afghanistan.
NEPA has also worked collaboratively with students at the University of Richmond in Virginia, USA to complete the listing process. In the spring semester of 2009, students conducted research on Afghan species for AWEC and participated electronically in an evaluation session to answer questions for the Committee. Six species assessed by students are now listed as protected in Afghanistan.
NEPA will be responsible for managing Afghanistan’s protected species including writing recovery plans for species designated as threatened. Species will be re-evaluated every five years to determine whether populations have recovered to the extent where they may be removed from the protected list.
NEPA gratefully acknowledges the assistance it has received from the international community including the USAID funded program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, and looks forward to its continued partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock and KabulUniversity in managing Afghanistan’s threatened and endangered species.
Last month, Afghanistan announced the creation of its first national park: Band-e-Amir, a spectacular series of six deep blue lakes separated by natural dams made of travertine, a mineral deposit.
WCS is currently the only organization conducting ongoing scientific conservation studies in Afghanistan in the past 30 years, and is continuing to work with the Afghan government to establish a network or parks and protected areas.
The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild places worldwide. We do so through science, global conservation, education and the management of the world’s largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together these activities change attitudes towards nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans living in harmony. WCS is committed to this mission because it is essential to the integrity of life on Earth. Visit: www.wcs.org
2009-05-13 13:20:46 GMT2009-05-13 21:20:46 (Beijing Time) Xinhua English LANZHOU, May 13 (Xinhua) — No decision has been made if a snow leopard captured in a northwestern Chinese village will be released into the wild, an animal researcher said Wednesday. The big cat wandered into a village at the foot of QilianMountain in Zhangye City, Gansu Province, on April 29, prompting fearful villagers to seek police help. Police and animal protectionists shot the wild animal with a tranquilizer gun and put it in an iron cage amid worries that it might hurt people. The animal was then handed over to the GansuEndangeredAnimalResearchCenter. The snow leopard, female, is 70 to 80 centimeters long and weights around 40 km, said Li Yan, a researcher at the center, adding that the animal is in good condition. Li said the researchers were baffled by why the elusive and solitary animal came down from the high mountains. He ruled out three possibilities as reasons: human damage to its habitat, food shortage and waning ability to hunt due to illness or age. Snow leopards are usually nocturnal and live in mountains more than 3,000 meters above the sea level. They are white, yellowish, or smoky-gray with dark-gray to black spots and rosettes, the Snow Leopard Trust said on its Web site. The animal is listed as “endangered” in China, the same level given the giant panda. An estimated 3,500 to 7,000 wild snow leopards roam the mountains of central Asia, in addition to 600 to700 more in zoos around the world, according to the agency.http://english.sina.com/china/2009/0513/241004.html
Posted Mon May 4, 2009 7:01am AEST
Updated Mon May 4, 2009 10:19am AEST
Snow leopard: like many other big cat species, snow leopards are endangered, due to pressures on their habitat and poaching. (Supplied: Snow Leopard Conservancy)
A program to save snow leopards in the Indian Himalaya could be a template for saving big cats around the world.
Australian film-maker Mitchell Kelly can no longer visit his beloved big cats in the wild, but his ground-breaking documentaries are helping to keep them alive.
After suffering two life-threatening cerebral oedemas while filming the giant cats in the Indian Himalayas, he can never again risk going to altitude. He does not know whether he will work full-time again.
His films continue his conservation work though, being shown regularly in the Himalayan province of Ladakh where he filmed between 1999 and 2003.
They are part of a successful conservation program that is convincing local farmers the leopards can be an income provider, rather than a pest that threatens their livestock and their livelihoods.
Snow leopards roam the harsh mountain terrain of 12 countries, including China, Afghanistan, the 'stans' of Central Asia, India and Russia. In many places they are hunted for their pelts, and for their body parts, for use in Chinese medicine.
But until the last few decades, little was known about how they live due to the remoteness of their territory and their extreme shyness.
"If we know something, if we understand it, we're more likely to love it", says Mitchell Kelly, and that is really the basis of the program that was started in Ladkah by the NGO, the Snow Leopard Conservancy.
The program works to help local farmers protect their livestock from predators such as wolves and snow leopards, by providing materials such as wire netting and posts for the pens where the animals are kept at night.
It may not sound like much, but cash is a rare commodity in rural Ladakh, where it is a daily struggle just to get through the long winters on what can be grown in the warmer months.
There is little spare money for luxuries, and the farmers depend absolutely on their crops and their animals.
The loss of even one or two animals to a snow leopard represents a disaster to most farmers.
Ladakh is in the trans-Himalaya, and is a high altitude desert with less rain than the Sahara.
Only the toughest survive here, and that includes the Ladakhi people, who are as smart and hard-working as they come.
Whilst they have farmed in traditional ways for generations, they are quick to adapt to new technologies when they become available, and relish any opportunity to improve their situation.
Homestay programs
The Snow Leopard Conservancy trains locals to educate Ladakhi children about biodiversity, and helps families run homestay programs in remote villages.
Local women host tourists in their own homes, providing traditional accommodation and food.
Not only does this give the women some money of their own, often for the first time, it also means less pressure on camp sites in remote regions.
Traditionally, tourists have camped, and that means bringing a lot of pack animals into the fragile mountain environment.
The pack animals compete with the domestic animals for the scarce resources.
So the homestay program helps in a multi-layered way; providing cash, reducing the ecological impact of campers, and showing the villagers that the snow leopards can be an asset, rather than a dangerous pest that should be eliminated.
Mitchell Kelly first became interested in trying to film snow leopards after reading Darla Hillard's book Vanishing Tracks: Four Years Among the Snow Leopards of Nepal, first published in 1989.
The book is Hillard's vivid personal account of the first scientific expedition to successfully radio collar and study wild snow leopards.
Hillard was a secretary who fell in love with wildlife biologist Rodney Jackson and together they pioneered the study of snow leopards, over four seasons in an extremely isolated region of western Nepal.
In that four-and-a-half years they made just 18 snow leopard sightings but with the help of locals they were able to capture and sedate five of them, and attach radio collars.
Information from this project is still the main source of data about how snow leopards live.
Their work convinced Mitchell Kelly that with a lot of perseverance and luck, it might be possible to capture the animals on film.
And after a year trying in Ladakh, he finally succeeded.
For his second film Kelly teamed up with Rodney Jackson, Rinchen Wangchuk and other Snow Leopard Conservancy staff and they used remote camera traps positioned on high ridges to track down the leopards.
They even managed to film a mating.
Touch and go
But when Kelly went back to Ladakh to make a third documentary - this one about the conservation program - he nearly died from altitude sickness.
Filming above 5,000 metres he became disoriented and did not realise he had a high altitude cerebral oedema - a condition where the brain swells from excess fluid and begins pressing on the skull.
"I just thought it was an off day," he tells Foreign Correspondent.
"And unfortunately when you do start to succumb to altitude one of the first things that goes is your judgement."
He got out his first aid book and self-diagnosed hepatitis.
He kept on filming, but when he could not even sit up or manage to finish a sentence coherently, his local guide finally managed to convince Kelly he had to descend or he would die on the mountain.
They had to go higher to get over a pass before they finally got back to camp four hours later, and it was touch and go.
"Another 20 or 30 minutes more and I wouldn't have made it out".
Amazingly, Kelly went back to the same region a few months later to try again.
Almost immediately he had another attack.
He knows he is lucky to be alive, and six years on, he is still recuperating.
He spends his days painting and taking photos in the Australian bush on his family property outside Perth, but he never forgets the mountain, the people who helped him, and the cats he filmed.
The locals are unlikely to forget him either.
Kelly says that when he first went to Ladakh in the late 1990s few locals had ever seen a snow leopard in the wild.
They were also convinced he had not really filmed them even after all those months up on the mountain - "and it wasn't until I took the film back and showed them that they finally admitted they had thought I was a bald-faced liar!"
Foreign Correspondent's program on the conservation program in Ladakh can be seen on ABC1 at 8:00pm on Tuesday May 5.
With only an estimated 3,500 to 7,000 snow leopards left in the wild, conservation programs are necessarily enlisting the help of local communities to increase the species’ chances of survival.
Founded in 1981, the International Snow Leopard Trust, which monitors the movements of the solitary cat in China, India, the Kyrgyz Republic, Mongolia, and Pakistan, also gives poverty-stricken local women training and equipment to produce camel-wool and related products which are sold internationally and via the Snow Leopard Trust online store (www.snowleopard.org/shop).
In this way, the women are able to afford food, medicine, and school bills, and the herding males no longer have to poach endangered snow leopards to survive. All profits are invested back into community conservation projects.
In Mongolia, the Trust, which is funded mainly by individual donors, members, and business partnerships, is also trying to ensure locals get the high price of the wool they deserve. By providing families with a regular buyer, rather than traveling traders, participants often increase their income from 25 to 40 percent.
Though snow leopards are sometimes poached for their pelts and bones, they are mostly killed in retaliation for preying on domestic livestock. Participants, of whom there are over 400, are learning to develop sustainable herding practices such as smaller herd sizes, so that there is more natural prey for the snow leopards. In addition, participants sign a pledge to stop the poaching of all snow leopards and their prey, and a cash bonus is given once a year to each compliant participant. If one person violates the contract, the entire community loses the bonus. Ecological workshops, eco-camps, newsletters, posters and other resources help raise awareness in villages.
Things are also looking up in the Himalayan provinces of India, the third most populous snow leopard region after China and Mongolia. Launched in March, Project Snow Leopard will include the promotion of alternative livelihoods for local people and public awareness activities.
In Ladakh (Jammu and Kashmir) and Nepal, where Peter Matthiessen wrote his epic book while researching the snow leopard with George Schaller in the 1970s, the Snow Leopard Conservancy (www.snowleopardconservancy.org) has launched a successful incentive program, whereby locals set up bed and breakfast accommodation for visitors in a spare room at a cost of about $13 a night. The organization also organizes snow leopard treks.
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War-wearied Afghanis received uplifting news on Earth Day this year. Their government has announced the creation of the nation’s first national park, Band-e-Amir, protecting a one-of-a-kind landscape encompassing six sky-blue lakes separated by natural dams.
Announced by Afghanistan’s National Environmental Protection Agency (NEPA) at a ceremony in the FAO Building at the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation, and Livestock in Kabul this morning, key funding for the park was provided by The United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
In addition, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) provided support with wildlife surveys, identifying park boundaries, and working with local government and communities. WCS developed the management plan and laws for the park. The park’s creators hope the system set up for Band-e-Amir National Park will be extended to new parks in the future.
“At its core, Band-e-Amir is an Afghan initiative supported by the international community. It is a park created for Afghans, by Afghans, for the new Afghanistan,” said Dr. Steven E. Sanderson, President and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Society. “Band-e-Amir will be Afghanistan’s first national park and sets the precedent for a future national park system.”
The park will be protecting one of Afghanistan’s most treasured natural areas. Six lakes resting high in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Central Afghanistan are separated by natural dams made from the rare mineral deposit travertine. Such systems are found in only a few place in the world, most of which are on the UNESCO World Heritage list, a future goal for Afghanistan’s first park. Pollution and human degradation of the fragile travertine dams currently threaten the park.
Unfortunately much of the park’s wildlife has already been lost. But surveys for the new park found ibex; urials, a wild sheep with massive horns; wolves; foxes; and the Afghan snow finch, the only endemic bird in the country. Snow leopards used to dwell in the region but vanished during the 1980s because of hunting.
While Band-e-Amir is not new to travelers it has been little visited since war engulfed the Afghanistan in 1979. After the nation gained some stability following the American-led invasion in 2001, thousands of Afghan tourists returned to Band-e-Amir. As well as natural beauty, the park has religious significance since it is believed the third caliph of Islam visited the region. With the new region’s status and publicity, the country hopes to attract international visitors.
Next on the list, Afghanistan is looking at creating a network of parks, including possible protection for the abundant wildlife in the Pamir Mountains.
The number of animals which can be legally hunted for a special payment in 2010 was approved during cabinet meeting on Thursday.
Over the next year 50 male wild sheep, 200 male wild rocky mountain goats, 50 antelopes, 80 gazelle, 60 gray wolves, 200 birds and 240 saker falcon can legally be hunted or captured.
Those animals will be hunted exclusively by foreign hunters next year who will pay a fee to the government. The price, which is regulated by law, depends on the type of animal hunted.
Hunters from Arabian countries tend to have more interest in taking saker falcon alive and bringing them back to the Middle East. The price for one of these birds is set at US$ 12,000.
According to the census of the Ministry of Nature, Environment and Tourism, Mongolia has 12,000-15,000 female wild sheep, 25,000-30,000 female wild goats, one million white gazelle, 50,000 antelopes, 30,000 gray wolves and 6,500 saker falcons.
Four percent of them could be used for hunting, based on management to protect nature and the environment, explained the representatives from the ministry.
2005-2008 state hunting revenues were Tg 13.8 billion, according to information from the ministry.
From 1926-1985 Mongolia was delivering 119 million furs, 13 million kilograms of game meat, 1.5 million tons of elk antlers and trading as many as 3.5 million animals to Russia in a single year.
Since 1990 the border with China has been open and this has caused the wild animal change its roots.
According to the World Bank report named “Silent Steppe”, which was completed in 2004, the population of Mongolia’s subspecies of saiga antelope catastrophically declined from over 5,000 to less than 800, an 85 percent drop, from 2000-2005.
The driving force behind this collapse is the lucrative Chinese medicinal market for saiga horn. Red deer have also declined catastrophically across Mongolia. According to a 1986 government assessment, the population size at that time was approximately 130,000 deer inhabiting 115,000 square km. The most recent population assessment in 2004 showed that only about 8,000 to 10,000 red deer now inhabit Mongolia’s 15 aimags. This is a 92 percent decline in only 18 years. Government figures estimated 50,000 argali in Mongolia in 1975, but only 13,000 to 15,000 in 2001 (Amgalanbaatar et al. 2002). This is a 75 percent decline in just 16 years.
Marmot once numbered more than 40 million, dropping to around 20 million by 1990 and were last tallied in 2002 at around 5 million; a decline of 75 percent in only 12 years (Batbold 2002). Finally, saker falcons have started a similarly precipitous decline, dropping from an estimated 3,000 breeding pairs in 1999 to 2,200 pairs, losing 30 percent of the population in just 5 years (Shagdarsuren 2001).
Trade in medicinal products has increased both on the domestic and international market. The primary trading partner is China, but several interviewees reported selling large volumes to Koreans as well.
International buyers are looking primarily for brown bear gall bladder, saiga antelope horns, wolf parts of all types (including tongue, spleen, ankle bones, and teeth), musk deer (Moschus moschiferus) glands, red deer shed and blood antlers, genitals, tails, and fetuses, and snow leopard bones. The domestic medicinal market includes marmot, wolf, corsac fox, badger, sable, brown bear, muskrat, roe deer, musk deer, snow leopard, Pallas’ cat, Daurian hedgehog, Daurian partridge, Altai snowcock, and northern raven. Trade in game meat, other than fish, appears to be limited to the domestic market for the moment. Mongolian gazelle meat was once traded to China, but that trade has apparently stopped with the recent banning of commercial harvests in Mongolia and the closure of game processing plants in China.
Mongolia also supplied large quantities of fish to markets in Russia in the early 1990s, but a change in supply routes and higher prices paid in China have caused trade to shift primarily to China, although trade continues to some degree with Russia.
Even though international game meat trade has slowed or even stopped, the domestic market is thriving and by itself represents a significant and continuing threat to wildlife populations. The domestic market therefore deserves serious management and regulatory attention.
Since 2006 Mongolia’s government has prohibited the hunting of marmots, a ban which continues. The lack of a marmot census has made it impossible to tell, however, whether it has had an effect.
Before prohibiting the hunting of marmot, game meat was available in local markets. Siberian and Altai marmot, Mongolian gazelle, roe deer, moose, Altai snowcock, several species of fish, and, in some areas, Asiatic wild ass were all on offer.
The Ministry of Nature and Environment actively promotes trophy hunting and has set special rates ranging from US$100 for red fox to as much as US$25,000 for Altai argali, according to the report which was made 2004. Reinvesting a percentage of these fees in the conservation of the resource (required by the Law on Reinvestment of Natural Resource Use Fees) has the potential to provide significant funding for wildlife management. However, government finance regulations and a lack of community benefit from trophy hunting prevent this market from achieving the desired outcome of supporting hunting management and local economies. As a result, trophy hunting represents yet another competing use of a dwindling resource.
Although exact amounts are difficult to verify, all indications are that volumes of wildlife passing through these markets have been high. One trader at the Tsaiz market reported total sales in 2004 of 500,000 to 600,000 marmot skins, 50,000 wolf skins, and 50,000 each for red and corsac fox skins.
Mamadsho Qadamshoev of the Pamir Biological Institute of Tajikistan wrote:
At 2:15 night on 4th – 5th of November 2008 in the countryside of Khorog town the taxi driver Mozimov Mulibsho wanted to cross the road by the small bridge and suddenly noticed that in the middle of the bridge about 3-5 meter far from him is staying a young Snow Leopard. The driver stopped the car and started to look at the beautiful creature. From the other side of the bridge 5 people were walking toward the Leopard. What do you think what did the young Leopard do in this case? Did it move toward the car or the walking people? Or it jumped to the river? No. The Leopard looked around and calmly as a domesticated animal walked toward the people and then moved straight to the side of mountains, where 15-20 meters far from the bridge the other big Leopard (female) was waiting for him. Both of them moved to the side of the Pamir Botanical Garden.
It turned out that for many years this bridge and other bridges of Shohdara River and the mountain rivers become a pathway for the Snow Leopards to move from the one side to another mostly at night time.
In this case the two Leopards were crossing the road of the North Ishkasim spine by the central bridge to Roshtkala spine, where the snow is lesser.
The snow is not steady in these rocky southern slopes and it avalanching right away. The part of the slopes where the snow melts becomes a pasture for the goats. For the last few years the mountain goats are the common prey for wolves and Leopards whose numbers are increasing and they make a herd of 30-35. In the spring (usually in April) the herd of mountain goats is moving to the northern mountainside and the beasts of prey – wolves and leopards also follow them. On May and September the main prey of the predatory animals is the red marmot, which is common in the mountains. Such is life of the predatory animals and their prey in the sever mountain condition where the winter is 60 degrees of frost with frequent snow-slips and in spring there mudflows and other natural disasters. Despite this thankfully life is continued in these severe mountains.
The following snow leopard sighting was reported by SLN member Ashok Bhurtyal:
“This February, I was on a two-week long walk in the LangtangNational Park. On 21 Feb 2009, I spotted a rare snow leopard in the Cholang Kharka area. The young adult cat sprang up from the hillside onto the trek trail! It took a few turns around, saw me, was not scared of me, me neither! It was like a good friendship. I opened my handycam and caught it on tape, taking care not to scare away the beautiful cat. After about 10 seconds of filming, the leopard went slowly to I don’t know where. I followed the track but could not locate the animal again. Meeting this mammal was both unexpected and very rewarding.
I was in Langtang region to generate and offer some support for health and health care in collaboration with local peasants. Excitedly, I met the cat! I wish to share the video with interested individuals and organisations. And also hope to generate some support for improving health in Langtang.
Further, I would be very happy to find a competent videography expert/professional who would capture my mini DV cassette into media file to be stored and played on a computer. I can offer some remuneration commensurate with local prices prevailing in Kathmandu.
Sincerely,
Ashok Bhurtyal
Director of Programmes
People’s Health Initiative
(Volunteer group working passionaltely to improve health in Nepali Mountains) Kathmandu, Nepal”
At least four protected areas were on fire for an unusually long time until just a few days ago.
Nasa’s satellite imagery showed most of the big fires were in and around the national parks along the country’s northern areas bordering Tibet.
Active fires were recorded in renowned conservation success stories like the Annapurna, Kanchanjunga, Langtang and Makalu Barun national parks.
The extent of the loss of flora and fauna is not yet known.
Press reports said more than 100 yaks were killed by fire in the surrounding areas of the KanjanchangaNational Park in eastern Nepal.
Trans-Himalayan parks host rare species such as snow leopards, red pandas and several endangered birds.
Carbon source
More than the loss of plants and animals, the carbon dioxide emitted by the fires was a matter of concern, according to Ghanashyam Gurung, a director at WWF’s Nepal office.
Some of the national parks in the plains bordering India were also on fire, but those caused less concern among conservationists and forest officials.
“Fires in the protected areas in the plain lands can be controlled easily because we have logistics and manpower ready for that – and that is what we did this time,” said Laxmi Manandhar, spokesman for Nepal‘s Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation.
“But in the national parks in the Himalayan region, we could hardly do anything because of the difficult geography. Nor do we have facilities of pouring water using planes and helicopters.”
Forest fires in Nepal‘s jungles and protected areas are not uncommon during the dry season between October and January.
Most of the fires come about as a consequence of the “slash and burn” practice that farmers employ for better vegetation and agricultural yields.
But this time the fires remained out of control even in the national parks in the Himalayan region where the slash and burn practice is uncommon.
In some of the protected areas, the fires flared up even after locals and officials tried to put them out for several days.
High and dry
So, why were the fires so different this time?
“The most obvious reason was the unusually long dry spell this year,” says Mr Gurung, just back in Kathmandu from LangtangNational Park to the north of the capital.
“The dryness has been so severe that pine trees in the Himalayan region are thoroughly dry even on the top, which means even a spark is enough to set them on fire.”
For nearly six months, no precipitation has fallen across most of the country – the longest dry spell in recent history, according to meteorologists.
“This winter was exceptionally dry,” says Department of Hydrology and Meteorology chief Nirmal Rajbhandari.
“We have seen winter becoming drier and drier in the last three or four years, but this year has set the record.”
Rivers are running at their lowest, and because most of Nepal‘s electricity comes from hydropower, the country has been suffering power cuts up to 20 hours a day.
Experts at the department said the severity of dryness fits in the pattern of increasing extreme weather Nepal has witnessed in recent years.
Had it not been for recent drizzles, conservationists say some of the national parks would still be on fire.
They point to “cloud burst phenomena” – huge rainfall within a short span of time during monsoons, and frequent, sudden downpours in the Himalayan foothills – as more examples of extreme weather events.
“Seeing all these changes happening in recent years, we can contend that this dryness that led to so much fire is one of the effects of climate change,” said Mr Rajbhandari.
Anil Manandhar, head of WWF Nepal, had this to ask: Are we waiting for a bigger disaster to admit that it is climate change?
“The weather pattern has changed, and we know that there are certain impacts of climate change.”
Gaps in the record
However, climate change expert Arun Bhakta Shrestha of the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) was cautious about drawing conclusions.
“The prolonged dryness this year, like other extreme events in recent years, could be related to climate change but there is no proper basis to confirm that.
“The reason (why there is no confirmation) is lack of studies, observation and data that could have helped to reach into some conclusion regarding the changes.”
Indeed, there has been no proper study of the impacts of climate change on the region: not just in Nepal but in the entire Hindu Kush Himalayas.
This is the reason why the region has been dubbed as a “white spot” by experts, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Limited studies have shown that temperature in the Himalayas has been increasing on average by 0.06 degrees annually, causing glaciers to melt and retreat faster.
The meltdown has been rapidly filling up many glacial lakes that could break their moraines and burst out, sweeping away everything downstream.
In Nepal and neighbouring countries, these “glacial lake outburst floods” and monsoon-related floods resulting from erratic rainfalls are at present the most talked-about disasters in the context of climate change.
If conservationists’ and meteorologists’ latest fears mean anything, forest fires may also be something that would be seen as one of the climate impacts.
In the wake of the 2007 United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Nepal has been preparing to join an international effort known as Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD).
But if the forest fires it saw this year became a regular phenomenon, the country will instead be emitting increased carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – a case of climate science’s not very aptly-named “positive feedback”.
By Fran Hackett 
“The Wildlife Conservation Society commends the 