The premises are cramped and claustrophobic, but it is a beehive of activity: a former auditorium boarded up to yield office space. It is the base camp of the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, a Nepali "NGO" on a ecological crusade (but burdened with a terrible logo, see below). It is mid-February, and the Trust´s staff of fourteen are in a tizzy keeping track of the its burgeoning responsibilities.
News has just come in by wireless that a rhino from the Chitwan jungle is heading south across the border into Bihar. Fallout continues from the Trust´s whistle-blowing on the the Bhrikuti Paper Factory, a day before it was to be inaugurated, for discharging untreated effluents into the Narayani river. There is discussion on how best to preserve the cloud forests of the Barun Valley in East Nepal, and follow-ups on a snow-leopard sttudy in the Shey-Phoksumdo National Park, a project to identify endangered Nepali plants, an appraisal of the red panda´s diminishing habitat, and the movement of 27 Tadio-collared gharials. (It was learnt later that the rhino had been shot by the Bihar police.)
In September, the Trust launched a unique conservation experiment in the Annapurna region, one that hqpes to balance the needs of a local population, trekking tourism and the fragile environment. In January, the Trust used cranes, trucks and good Nepali ingenuity to crate nine rhinos from the Chitwan Valley to the Bardia Wildlife Reserve in an attempt to provide alternative habitat as well as to minimise conflict with villagers.
The Trust was established by a Government Act in 1982 to fill a keenly felt need to supplement the conservation-related activities of HMG. As Prince Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah, Chairman of its Governing Board of Trustees told donors in 1984,have been unwise and unrealistic to ask HMG alone to grant funds to realise the prescriptions of the World Conservation Strategy, to which Nepal had subscribed.