conservation action and protected areas
AAbout 113,000 km² (15 percent of the land area of the hotspot),
is under some form of protection in the Himalaya region, although only
78,000 km² (roughly 10 percent) are in protected areas in IUCN
categories I to IV.
While the earliest protected areas, in Assam, were established as
wildlife sanctuaries in 1928 and 1934, most other protected areas in
the region are relatively new, having been established only in the last
three or four decades. However, many hill-tribe communities have
traditionally recognized and protected sacred groves, which have served
as effective refuges for biodiversity for centuries. Today, several
protected areas — Corbett National Park, Manas National Park, Kaziranga
National Park, Chitwan National Park, and Sagarmatha National Park —
have been distinguished as World Heritage Sites for their contribution
to global biodiversity.
In the northeastern Himalayan states of India, a network of
protected areas established in the 1970s and 1980s, including Corbett
and Rajaji National Parks. These protected areas harbor important
populations of elephants and tigers. In Nepal, 21 protected areas cover
at least 26,666 km² of land. Chitwan, which was established as the
country’s first national park in 1973, is well known for its tiger and
greater one-horned rhinoceros ( Rhinoceros unicornis, EN)
populations. Also in Nepal, the Annapurna Conservation Area, the
Kanchenjunga Conservation Area and the Makalu-Barun National Park are
all run through community-based biodiversity management.
Although a protected area system was established in Bhutan as
early as the 1960s, this system was dominated by the Jigme Dorji
Wangchuck National Park. The park was mostly confined to the north of
the country, and did little to contribute towards biodiversity
conservation because most of the park protected vast areas of permanent
rock and ice. In 1995, the protected area system was revised to include
all nine of the current protected areas (five national parks, three
wildlife sanctuaries, and one strict nature reserve) accounting for
almost 26 percent of the total land area in Bhutan. In 1999, based on a
WWF field survey, another 9 percent was added to the system in the form
of 12 biological corridors, which linked the protected areas to create a
conservation landscape extending across the country. The biological
corridors provide connectivity between parks and reserves for wildlife
species such as tigers and snow leopard to follow seasonal movement of
their prey species. The Royal Government of Bhutan is committed to
maintaining 60 percent of their forest cover in perpetuity along with
the biological corridors
Transboundary conservation areas offer an important opportunity
for conservation in the Himalaya region. The adjoining Manas National
Park in Bhutan and Manas Tiger Reserve in Assam, India, is one such
complex. Another important initiative is the plan to create a
tri-national peace park with the Kanchanjunga Conservation Area in
Nepal, the Kanchendzoga National Park in Sikkim, India, and an extension
of the Qomolungma Nature Reserve in the Tibet Autonomous Region of
China.
Nevertheless, many of the protected areas in the Himalayas,
particularly in the lowlands along south-facing slopes, are too small to
maintain viable populations of threatened species, and efforts should
be made to expand conservation benefits to adjacent areas. Furthermore,
about 17 percent of the protected area system across the Himalayan
Mountains consists of permanent rock and ice – majestic, but
biologically impoverished habitats.
The protected area network in the Himalaya Hotspot needs to be
expanded in a way that best protects biodiversity over the long term. In
addition to biological corridors and conservation landscapes,
biodiversity is best conserved through the conservation of Key
Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), sites holding populations of globally
threatened or geographically restricted species. KBAs are discrete
biological units that contain species of global conservation concern and
that can be potentially managed for conservation as a single unit.
Building from the network of Important Bird Areas, data on globally
threatened species in other taxonomic groups were synthesized from a
number of sources, and in collaboration with local partners, to identify
an initial set of 175 KBAs in the Himalaya Hotspot.
Investment in biodiversity conservation in the Himalayan Region
comes primarily from national governments, bilateral and multilateral
agencies, and international and regional NGOs. The national governments,
backed by international agencies such as the Global Environmental
Facility (GEF), United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World
Bank, the European Union (EU), the Danish International Development
Agency (DANIDA), WWF, and the MacArthur Foundation, are supporting
projects to improve protected area management, sustainable natural
resources, and livelihoods.
Many of the largest projects target communities living in and
around forested areas, with the idea that decreasing poverty and
increasing awareness and ownership over resources will result in greater
biodiversity conservation. For instance, the Livelihoods and Forestry
Program, to be implemented by The British Aid Agency (DFID), calls for
GBP 8.2 million to be spent over 10 years on promoting active community
management of forests in the Terai Arc Landscape of Nepal. Other
projects are targeted towards the conservation of specific species, such
as the snow leopard.
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