Community-Based Anti-Poaching Unit

It has become universally agreed upon that successful conservation depends upon the cooperation and participation of local communities around tiger habitat. With the vision of Dr. Bhim Gurung and in partnership with Nepal’s National Trust for Nature Conservation, in 2009 The Fund for The Tiger began funding a community-based anti-poaching unit at Dalla in the southwestern corner of Nepal’s Bardia National Park. Our post, in the Khata corridor, a network of 74 community forests covering 202 sq km, has secured safe passage for tigers between Bardia National Park in Nepal and Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in India. Over the last 5 years, 46 individual tigers have been detected using the corridor with other iconic and threatened mammal species, including the Asian elephant and the greater one-horned rhino. The CBAPU idea met with resounding success and there are now 93 separate groups with almost 2500 youth volunteers working in conservation efforts across the Bardia landscape. Thanks, in part, to this groundbreaking effort, Nepal has become the role model for community-based tiger conservation.