Study reveals untold, and unprotected, wildlife wealth of Nepal’s Madhesh province

KATHMANDU — The most extensive biodiversity survey yet of Nepal’s little-studied Madhesh province has revealed a wealth of wildlife facing threats from infrastructure development — and with virtually no protected areas to safeguard them.

The vertebrate survey was led by Hari Sharma, a zoology professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, between 2022 and 2024. Sharma and his team used camera traps, mist nets and direct field observations to identify 163 fish, 24 amphibian, 578 bird and 900 mammal species, including the iconic tigers (Panthera tigris) and the Asian elephants (Eliphas maximus).

“Our study is a first in many ways,” Sharma said. “This is the first time that such an extensive study has been carried out in Madhesh.” It’s also the first by Tribhuvan’s zoology department funded by the university’s newly established national priority research program.

Madhesh province is located in Nepal’s southeastern Indo-Gangetic plains region, on the border with India, and is the agricultural heartland of the country. It accounts for just 6.6% of the country’s total land area, but 17.75% of its arable land. It also has the largest area of irrigated land as a proportion of total area, at 28.68%.

For conservationists, however, the province has long been overlooked in terms of biodiversity conservation and research-related activities.

This was evident in the findings from Sharma’s team, which recorded the presence of nine fish species never documented before in the province. This includes the culturally significant golden mahseer (Tor putitora), listed as endangered and found in local rivers, highlighting the ecological value of Madhesh’s waterways.

Amphibians were another highlight of the study, with three of the 24 species documented in the province not known to occur there before. Among these was the Orissa frog (Fejervarya orissaensis), a species once thought to be confined to the Indian state of Odisha, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) south of Madhesh.

Bird diversity was even richer, the survey found, with the 578 species identified in Madhesh accounting for nearly two-thirds of all known birdlife in Nepal. Notably, six of these species are listed as critically endangered, affirming the province’s role as a vital habitat for rare and threatened birds. It was a similar story with the province’s mammals, with 19 of the 900 identified listed as endangered and one as critically endangered.

The presence of so many threatened species makes the lack of formally protected areas in the province all the more start. Small parts of Parsa National Park in the west and Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve in the east overlap with the province, but there are no protected areas fully contained within its borders. Additionally, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal’s central conservation authority, doesn’t have an office in Madhesh, leaving the region administratively detached from mainstream conservation planning and resources.

All this translates into a host of challenges for biodiversity conservation, the researchers found. “The most serious are the challenges related to infrastructure development and human-wildlife conflict,” Sharma said.

The promulgation of Nepal’s new constitution in 2015 has driven a massive infrastructure development push, with roads, railways and cable cars being built or planned across the country. Madhesh hosts many of these projects, including new highways connecting India in the south and China in the north, the cross-country Hulaki Highway, and the East-West Railway Line. The fallout of these projects pushing wildlife out of their habitat has been an increase in animals such as nilgai antelopes (Boselaphus tragocamelus), wild boars (Sus scrofa) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) encroaching on farms in search of food, further deepening human-wildlife conflict.

To address the challenges, the researchers suggest a multipronged approach targeting everyone from policymakers to schoolchildren. “At the policy level, conservation efforts should prioritize enforcing wildlife protection laws to curb illegal hunting and trapping while promoting comprehensive, long-term species research,” Sharma said.

At the same time, awareness programs in schools and communities, and the simplification of wildlife relief programs — to compensate farmers for crop or livestock losses — can improve community relations, the study suggests.

The researchers’ other important recommendation is to establish protected corridors between Chitwan National Park, home to iconic species such as one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) and Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris) and Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve. “Similarly, north-south river corridors such as those linked to the Kamala, Jalad, Lakhandehi and Bagmati rivers will ensure connectivity and protect biodiversity,” the researchers said in a statement. They also suggested that wildlife such as nilgai and boars could be translocated to protected areas such as Chitwan, Parsa and where tigers are abundant.

Juddha Bahadur Gurung, acting chair of the National Natural Resources and Fiscal Commission, who wasn’t involved in the study, welcomed the findings for highlighting the potential of Madhesh province. He said the challenge now is to improve the lives and livelihoods of the people by making proper use of the natural resources.

Banner Image: A wild boar at Parsa National Park. Image by Aditya Pal via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Nepal’s Madhesh province lacks in biodiversity research & conservation

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Abhaya Raj Joshi Editor

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