This is a theoretical and practical review of Landscape Conservation approach now in practice for over a decade and hailed as a great successful approach to integrate the needs of biodiversity and wildlife as well the needs of sustainable development and conservation for people interacting with wildlife and biodiversity in landscapes

1. 1
Leveraging the
Landscapes
Conservation beyond the Boundaries

2. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries i
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not
necessarily reflect the views of their institutions or the financial contributors of this
publication.
Reproduction of this publication for resale or other commercial purposes is prohibited.
Reproduction for educational or other non commercial is permitted provided the
source is fully acknowledged.
ISBN: 978-9937-2-3974-5
Citation: Acharya, K.P., Tripathi, D.M., Joshi, J. and Gurung, U.M. (eds.). 2011.
Leveraging the Landscapes: Biodiversity Conservation beyond the Boundaries in
Nepal (Edited) 2011. Nepal Foresters Association (NFA) Kathmandu.
Published by Nepal Foresters Association (NFA)
Copyright: © 2011 Nepal Foresters Association (NFA).
Publication support: WWF, WTLCP and NTNC

3. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries ii
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Landscape Conservation Approach in Nepal 1
Dinesh Raj Bhuju and Amulya Ratna Tuladhar
2. Landscape Conservation in Nepal: Achievement and
Lessons from Western Terai Landscape Complex Project 15
Ekraj Sigdel, Dinesh Karki, Jagannath Koirala, Basan Shrestha,
Prakash Man Shrestha and Bijendra Basnyat
3. Terai Arc Landscape: A Sustainable Conservation Approach 30
Shiv Raj Bhatta, Ugan Manandhar, Santosh Nepal
4. Conservation Initiatives in Sacred Himalayan Landscape, Nepal 35
Ananta Bhandari
5. An Assessment of the Landscape Management Approach in the 42
Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal
Siddhartha Bajra Bajracharya, Ratna R. Timsinaand Kiran K.C.
6. Community Seed Bank: Reaching to Poor Farmers and Building
Climate Resiliency in Western Nepal 54
Shree Kumar Maharjan, Abishkar Subedi, Pitambar Shrestha, Assa Gurung,
Sajal Sthapit, Ram Rana, Ek Raj Sigdel, Dinesh Karki and Bhuwon Sthapit
7. Learning Perspectives and Analytical Framework for Framing PES in Nepal 68
Laxmi Dutt Bhatta and Rajan Kotru
8. Trans-boundary Landscape conservation in the HKH Region:
An Overview from Global and Regional Perspective 89
Krishna Prasad Oli
9. Role of Corridors in Linking Transnational Protected Areas in
Terai Arc Landscape 101
Shyam Bajimaya
10. Leveraging the Landscape: An Assessment of Options 118
Krishna Prasad Acharya, Rishikesh Ram Bhandary and Buddi Sagar Poudel
11. Towards Integrated Landscape Planning:
A Paradigm Shift in Conservation Planning in Nepal 128
Dinesh Karki, and Bijendra Basnyat

4. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 1
Paper 1
LANDSCAPE CONSERVATION APPROACH IN NEPAL
Dinesh Raj Bhuju1 and Amulya Ratna Tuladhar2
1Faculty of Science, Nepal Academy of Science and Technology
GPO Box 3323 Kathmandu
2Khwopa College, Tribhuvan University Affiliate
Dekocha, Bhaktapur
dineshbhuju@gmail.com
Summary
With the beginning of 20th century, the governments around the world started on setting the
core habitats aside as the solution to the dwindling wildlife population, the charismatic ones at
first. This management approach of protected areas did progress fundamentally from the twin
tradition of conservation and ecological discourse. As the scientific knowledge expanded and
practical experiences matured, we find the conservation approach undergoing a fundamental
shift. The protected areas are now planned with local people, and featured with ecological
corridors and other landscape characters to provide more space for species movement and
natural processes. Nepal set up its first national park in 1973, but very soon it not only realized
some of the adversities faced by the local people living around the park but also the space
constraint for population distribution and dynamics. Taking the advantage of new progresses
in conservation biology, Nepal adopted landscape approach and implemented in some of the
key areas without much delay. This paper discusses Nepal’s debut in conservation at
landscape level with theoretical antecedents in global contexts. Some of the works with
theoretical perspective pioneered by individual researchers and practical application involving
conservation organizations are described with examples. The paper is concluded with brief
mentioning of emerging issues like climate change and ecosystem services.
Key words: Chure Hills, Landscape ecology, Sacred landscape, Terai Arc Landscape Project,
Trans-boundary

5. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 2
Introduction
Species know no boundary but their fundamental requirements to exist and proliferate. The
ecological intricacies as revealed by scientific understanding of organisms living in the natural
environs have called for conservation beyond species and/or their protected habitat. Landscape
level conservation, thus, has been a realized management practice today. Nepal's commitment
to save and secure biodiversity is evidently reflected with the creation of an impressive
network of protected area system. As these areas are now turning out to be an island in the
midst of human dominated landscapes, landscape level conservation appears as a fitting
solution. The landscape conservation approach practiced in Nepal holds an exciting possibility
to effectively deliver conservation plans. This essay will look into the theoretical antecedents of
landscape conservation, its application in Nepal, and its promise to deliver effective
conservation.
Part I: Theoretical Antecedents
Landscape Conservation Approach in Nepal is one of the sustainable development solutions to
the threats of biodiversity loss. The approach is a practical, policy implementation mode that
draws its theoretical roots from two intellectual traditions: conservation and ecology.
Conservation has tried to harmonize the twin goals of protecting Nature from human activities
and finding ways to develop within the laws of Nature. On the other hand, ecology has tried
to understand the relationship between living organisms and their non-living environment so
that human beings, as living organisms, can thrive better in their environment. The following
paragraphs will outline key developments in these two intellectual traditions to the point
where they converge in the current ‘Landscape Conservation Approach in Nepal’.
Beginning with the alienation of human beings from Nature as a result of industrialization in
the 1700s in the West, as a result of rural, close-to-Nature livelihoods converging into the
dense, squalid, far-from-Nature livelihoods in the urban, Dickensonian factories, people of all
strata began to hanker for a reengagement with Nature (Adams, 1990). This reengagement of
Nature was perforce variegated according to mainly spatio-temporal variables but an entry
into this understanding can be made by adopting political economic stratification as an optic.
According to the political economy optic, following Marxian category of a ‘superstructure’ of
political and cultural processes on the ‘base’ of economic processes and structures in society
and nature/society relationships, the class that controlled political economic processes, the
ruling class of industrialists, politicians, feudal landlords, princes and regents, and residuals of
colonial power structures had better access to opportunities to re-engage with nature than
those at the bottom: menial labor, farmers, women, underclass and oppressed, and
marginalized ethnic groups who were forced to trade all of their labor output for bare survival
in the machine mode of the industrial era.

6. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 3
The political economic elite in the West, thus, went back to remnants of pristine Nature in
Europe (very little available) by means of country castles, manors, newly invented motor
vehicles but the satisfaction received was not enough. There was a growing call for unsullied
pristine Nature to wash away the spiritual grime of dirty wealth from the protean
industrialization. This phenomenon was seen in all walks of life from painters such as Paul
Gauguin exoticizing the earthy colors of Trinidadian women to romanticizing, celebrating and
idealization of Nature in Arts and Literature. Such inchoate socio-political strivings began to
congeal into discrete intellectual traditions to save Nature at a societal level in the beginnings
of the twentieth century.
In USA, for example, John Muir (1838-1914) was an early proponent of the ‘Preservationist’
Movement who argued for total hands-off from human beings (meaning money-making
industrialization, agriculture, mining, damming) to save pristine Nature like the Yellowstone
Geyser, the Old Faithful, Grand Canyon and the Hecht-Hechty spectacular landscape of the
Wild West of USA. His efforts represent the longing of the powerful elite that got a hearing
under President Theodore Roosevelt and the first National Park was established in 1872. Till
date, ‘National Park’ retains the heritage of ‘protected’ areas, carrying the baggage of an
antagonistic attitude towards the grubby, money-making by industry and agriculture that
privileges the rights of the elite to their aesthetic and spiritual satisfaction with coercive laws,
e.g. the National Park and Conservation Act 1973 laws and military protection of Royal
Chitwan National Park in Nepal.
For the super elite of Europe, the ex-colonialists, they did not have access to much undisturbed
Nature like the boundless Wild West their counterparts of USA had; so they ventured to their
colonial holdings in Africa, Asia and South America, the Tropics, where half of existing known
biodiversity still exists. It is in Africa, the land of teaming wildlife of zebras, lions, giraffes and
wildebeest that the ex-colonial big game, trophy hunters morphed their love of ‘shooting to
kill’ to ‘shooting to photograph’. As these ex-hunters were in the cutting edge of interaction
with pristine Nature, they were the first to be alarmed by the dwindling fate of the truly ‘wild’
wildlife and they sounded the call for protection of the objects of their hobby: the ‘wild’
wildlife. To this the burgeoning fields of biology, ecology, botany came to the service of
managerial tropical science, which offered a secular excuse to interfere in the affairs of their ex-
colonies in the name of science and nature preservation. Adams (1990) documents such
colonial roots of now secular conservation oriented international non-governmental
organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), IUCN, UNEP, FAO, etc. All of these
global organization got together to enunciate a World Conservation Strategy in 1980, to teach
the world how to save Nature and justify continued interference of the First World in the
affairs of the Third World in the guise of global nature protection (Redclift, 1992).
Along the way, over the last 200 years of inchoate First World elite actions to preserve Nature
for the satisfaction of their own kind only, there began a more articulated engagement with the
needs of the lower class for socioeconomic upliftment, ‘progress’ in the West and

7. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 4
‘development’ in the Third World. Even while John Muir was convincing Theodore Roosevelt
to set aside lands and laws to start the birth of the National Park movement first in USA then
worldwide, his contemporary Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), who went on to establish the US
Forest Service argued equally effectively for ‘conservation’- defined as the management (not
preservation) of Nature for the maximum satisfaction of the most people for the longest time as
the rallying cry for the establishment of the US Forest Service at the start of the twentieth
century but also to manage natural resources rationally for both Nature and People (read low
class people), including the damming of the Colorado river to supply irrigation and electricity
to the people of California. During Pinchot’s time, ‘conservation’ was only a political slogan, a
pragmatic approach not buttressed with solid science or policy dimensions. Over the last
century, the science that contributed to the backbone of conservation was ecology and the
policy dimension was strengthened by development in economics.
In ecology, a term coined by Haeckel in 1866 the systematic study of the relationship between
biota and abiota developed from the vocation of natural history or observation of all nature in
the tradition of Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Darwin to a more systematic study of
the relationship between larger life communities in lakes and dune landscapes by S.A. Forbes
(1844-1930) and H.C. Cowles (1869-1939) while F.E. Clements (1874-1945) H.A. Gleason (1882-
1975) argued over succession concepts. Early studies of temperate plant communities were
enlarged by study of tropical forest communities as well as community structure including
animal world. Later into a more experimental and mathematical study of individual organism
in controlled environmentalists by auto-ecologists such as G.F. Gause (1910-1986), A.J. Lotka
(1880-1949) and V. Volterra (1860-1940). In the meantime, animal ecologists introduced the
concept of ecological niche, e.g. Charles Elton (1900-1991). The latter half of the twentieth
century saw the development of ecology from the hierarchical scales from individual,
population, community to ecosystems, landscape, biomes and now global systems like the
Gaia.
The latter developments of post 1950s was aided by intellectual contributions of Geography,
the technology of air planes, rockets, photography, satellites, which was first pushed by the
Nazi Hitler’s desire for world domination with the latest technology of aerial photography; to
do this Carl Troll came into the picture by developing ‘landscape ecology’ in 1939 (Troll, 1939)
to study scales of lands rendered visible by aerial photos, hitherto not possible by land-based
platforms. The contemporary definition of ‘Landscape’ refers to a portion of land or territory
which the eye can comprehend as a single view, including all the objects so seen, especially in
its pictorial aspects. When this ‘eye’ was substituted by remote sensors such as air borne
cameras and satellite sensors, the landscape took on bigger dimensions, however, landscape
has traditions in both human geography and physical geography, referring to areas altered by
a unit of human processes or physical processes (Johnston et al., 1995). Geography, with its
long intellectual enquiry into the category of ‘space’ and how it changes, ‘spatial heterogeneity’
has used ‘landscape’ as a geographical category for over a century. With the technology
development of remote sensing driven by war industries and cold war defense motivations

8. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 5
and dollars, Landscape Ecology emerged as a sophisticated applied science that can capture
processes higher than ecosystems to global processes; however, in many countries, landscape
ecology is used to understand sub-national processes of nature-society relationships. While
general ecology theory focused on the study of more homogenous, discrete community units
organized in a hierarchical structure, landscape ecology built upon heterogeneity in space and
time, and frequently included human-induced landscape changes (Sanderson and Harris,
2000).
The recent emergence of landscapes as appropriate subjects for ecological study resulted from
three main factors: 1) broad-scale environmental issues and land-management problems, 2) the
development of new scale-related concepts in ecology, and 3) technological advances,
including the widespread availability of spatial data, the computers, softwares to manipulate
these data, and the rapid rise in computational power (Turner et al., 2001). Landscape ecology
emphasizes the interaction between spatial pattern and ecological process, that is, the causes
and consequences of spatial heterogeneity across a range of scales. The term landscape ecology
was introduced by the German biogeographer Carl Troll (1939), arising from the European
traditions of regional geography and vegetation science and motivated particularly by the
novel perspective offered by aerial photography. Landscape ecology essentially combined the
spatial approach of the geographer with the functional approach of the ecologists (Naveh and
Lieberman, 1984; Forman and Godron 1986).
Two important aspects of landscape ecology are: 1) it explicitly addresses the importance of
spatial configuration for ecological processes, and 2) it often focuses on spatial extents that are
much larger than those traditionally studied in ecology. The role of humans, obviously a
dominant influence on landscape patterns worldwide, is sometimes considered an important
component of a definition of landscape ecology. Indeed in the landscape approaches
characteristic of China, Europe and the Mediterranean, human activity is perhaps the central
factor in landscape ecological studies. Landscape ecology is sometimes considered to be an
interdisciplinary science dealing with the interrelation between human society and its living
space- its open and built up landscapes (Naveh and Lieberman, 1984). Landscape ecology
draws from a variety of disciplines, many of which emphasize social sciences, including
geography, landscape architecture, regional planning, economics, forestry, and wildlife
ecology.
One such use is the use of landscape ecology to develop landscape conservation approach
(Groom et al., 2006; Haufler, 1999; Brown et al., 2004). Here, the basic categories of landscape
ecology such as heterogeneous patches, matrix, corridors, edges, edge-effects, ecocline and
ecotones are used to explore ways to recoalesce fragmented patches of protected areas.
National park approach to protected area, despite phenomenal development this century,
covers only 10% of the land area in the world, with some areas like Nepal approaching 20%
and Bhutan nearing 60%. This was not considered adequate to address the degree of threats to
biodiversity worldwide and the ecosystem services biodiversity provides for the very survival

9. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 6
humankind. Increasing the areas under protection is clearly too costly in terms of political
capital, manpower, money and legitimacy in the face of poverty of the millions that demands
lands for economic upliftment (Budhathoki, 2003).
Even partial protection by means of buffer zone management and other options as community
based conservation management, while increasing the areas under partial protection, is not
considered adequate for the dispersed biodiversity and biodiversity outside of protected area
system such as the many species of medicinal and aromatic plants, non-timber forest products,
and other ecoregions of the Nepal Midhills. Now, climate change the prospect of global
warming is expected to be the biggest threat to biodiversity over the next century (Groom et
al., 2006) so there is an urgency to join fragmented patches of protected areas so they can be
operated at higher levels of ecosystem harmony, including for example the enabling of viable
metapopulations of tiger and rhino in the Terai Arc Landscape Project (TAL) (Karki et al., 2009;
Wikramanayake et al., 2004; Dinerstein and McDougal, 1998) and the snow leopards, Red
panda and Himalayan wildlife as in the case of Sacred Himalayan Landscape, Transboundary
Landscape Conservation and Mount Kailash Landscape Conservation (Sharma et al., 2007).
Part II Application in Nepal
In the landscape conservation approach in Nepal, the key approach is to relieve the bottlenecks
to migration and movement of animals so that a minimum viable population can be
maintained with genetic diversity and stability (Groom et al., 2006; Karki et al., 2009). This
ecological objective does present, however, novel policy challenges, since there are people
living in these bottlenecks, and some of them are rather poor and sometimes of different ethnic
groups, administrative and political jurisdictions or even different countries, and operating
under different sectoral outreach like forest, agriculture or local development ministry as well
as many local non-governmental organizations and community based organizations. There is
no ready-made policy road map that has been tested, so active learning from innovations made
in landscape conservation approaches in Nepal bear significance worldwide for greater cause
of biodiversity conservation in the larger context of sustainable development or the
harmonization of the needs of nature and the people. The following two figures summarize
the changing approaches biodiversity conservation leading to landscape conservation
approach in Nepal, extracted from Budhathoki (2005).
In the rest of the article, we will examine the case studies of landscape conservation approach
and analyze them from the perspective of their contribution to landscape ecology, conservation

10. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 7
Fig. 1. Landscape conservation complexes in Nepal. Source: Budhathoki, 2005
Fig. 2. Shifting conservation paradigms from island networks. Source: Budhathoki, 2005
policy, and their general contribution to the cause of global biodiversity services to humankind
and the sustainable development of poor peoples of Third World and Nepal.
In Nepal, landscape approach has been spearheaded by geographers and conservation
biologists. Specifically since 1990s, Nepali conservation scientists have been looking to enhance
conservation in areas outside protected areas and calling attention to contiguous landscapes
that are fast being fragmented. Beginning with 21st century, these theoretical approaches have
been supplemented by policy related approaches coming from sustainable development
paradigms such as participatory management and inclusion of marginalized groups of gender
and Dalits and greater awareness to address root causes of human development aspirations

11. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 8
and social inequity driving environmental degradation including the deterioration of
landscapes. Among the proponents are the UNDP/WWF/ICIMOD programs in Terai Arc
Landscape (TAL) Project, Western Terai Landscape Conservation Project (WTLCP), Sacred
Himalayan and Transboundary Conservation Projects in cooperation with Government of
Nepal line agencies such as the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation and its departments.
Harka Gurung (1939-2006) was one of the early eminent Nepali geographers who were
interested in the combination of both human and physical processes affecting the spatial
variability of human landscapes. As early as 1971, he wrote on the landscape patterns of Nepal
as determined much by its geographic setting and then the human activities (Gurung, 1971,
1989). The emphatic ridges that run east-west and numerous south-flowing rivers have defined
the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the country’s physiographic component, while the
lateral disposition of the country has caused bio-climatic variation from the arid west to the
humid east. As human attempts to adapt himself to the natural environment and in the
process leaves his imprint on the landscape. Thus, the three major geographic regions, viz.
Tarai, Hill and Mountain correspond to latitudinally arranged ecological zones. Based on these
natural settings, the major watershed, and population dimension, Gurung proposed regional
development plan, which surfaced in the Fourth Five-Year Plan of 1970-1975 (Sharma, 2007).
The other groups of leaders who have worked and contributed in developing and/or applying
the approach of landscape level conservation in Nepal are from landscape ecology domain:
forest ecologists, botanists, foresters and wildlife biologists.
In 1999, forest ecologist Dinesh Bhuju initiated and led a research team to prepare baseline
information on the ecology of the Chure Hills, the southernmost hills of the Himalaya also
known as Siwaliks (Bhuju, 2000). To conserve the Chure Hills, at landscape level, this study
aimed to identify key areas, with two-prong approach: 1) First determine areas with significant
changes in land use since 1958, 1978 and 1992; and 2) gather ecology-based information on the
Chure using grid-based samples (Bhuju, 2000, 2006, 2010). The project, supported by Resources
Himalaya, a Kathmandu based research organization, Nature Conservation Society of Japan
(NACS-J), and WWF/Nepal surveyed Chure (total area: 1,886,000 ha, length: 840 km) from east
(Mechi) to west (Mahakali) Nepal covering all major watersheds (Fig. 3), and accumulated
information on: i) land-use change, ii) forest structure and regeneration, iii) tree species
association at different altitudes, iv) local knowledge on plant use, and v) distribution of birds
and other fauna. Once a backwater of conservation, Chure is now in the national priority (see
Proceedings of National Seminar on Chure Environmental Study, June 15, 2010 organized by
Department of Soil Conservation and Watershed Management).

12. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 9
Fig. 3. Chure range in Nepal.
At corridor scale of landscape conservation, NTNC (National Trust for Nature Conservation)
took up a UNDP supported project on the Tiger-Rhino Corridor in 2001 (Thapa and Basnet
2006). The project focused its study in Barandabhar Corridor Forest adjoining to Chitwan
National Park (CNP) and aimed at promoting landscape level biodiversity conservation with
strong community-based management links to conserve endangered species. Very
significantly, the corridor is inhabited by relocated people from CNP. The Barandabhar Forests
serves as an important corridor of the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL), a program initiated by
Government of Nepal with the support of WWF Nepal Program encompassing 11 protected
areas of Nepal and India in 2001. Envisioning to set a landscape level management model for
safeguarding biological wealth and vital ecological functions of western Terai districts (Bardia,
Kailali and Kanchanpur), Government of Nepal in partnership seven national and
international organizations including UNDP, launched a 8-year long project of Western Terai
Landscape Conservation starting from 2005.
A cultural landscape study has also been conducted to describe and understand the
relationship of natural habitat and diverse ecosystem viz. agriculture, forest and grassland
ecosystems managed by human activities. Ram P. Chaudhary, a plant taxonomist and
biogeographer, got involved in an interdisciplinary research undertaken by a group of
biological and social scientists from Tribhuvan University and University of Bergen, Norway
between 2002 and 2006. The research project made invaluable contribution in cultural
landscape of Manang, a remote Trans Himalayan region in Nepal (Chaudhary, 2006).
The interpretation of landscape approach in Nepal, however, had been varying. In 1999,
Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation of Nepal proposed Shey Phoksundo National Park
(SPNP) for inclusion on the World Heritage Convention for inscription for which it produced

13. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 10
six criteria, three natural and three cultural. The SPNP is a southern margin of Tibetan Plateau,
but along with adjoining Tscharka Bhot and Mustang. Therefore, conservation biologist Pralad
Yonzon (2001) argued with strong basis of landscape characters such as geology, soil, climate
and vegetation that the proposal was unempirical to truncate SPNP (Dolpo) from similar and
contiguous landscape of Mustang together with Tsharka Bhot.
The importance of trans-boundary cooperation in protected area management was realized in
mid 1990s; however, it remained at political level organizing few bilateral meetings with
bordering countries China and India and organizing a few training activities (Paudel et al.,
2008). The trans-boundary landscape approach was finally adopted with the initiation of the
Sacred Himalayan Landscape. The SHL includes five of the 19 eco-regions that comprise the
Eastern Himalayan Conservation Complex, and the high topographical relief, climatic
variation, and its position at the ecotone of several biogeographic regions confer the area and
the landscape, with a high level of biological diversity. Chandra P Gurung (1950-2006), a
geographer, who went on to be an eminent conservationist of Nepal, played a key role in
implementing the plan. This approach called for the combination of attention on human
processes of both cultural and economic dimensions in addition to the standard ecological
dimensions in the landscape conservation approaches for Nepal both in the mountains and the
plains (Gurung et al., 2006).
A group of researchers associated with ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain
Development) also advanced the concept of trans-boundary conservation landscape. Chettri
and Sharma (2006) proposed developing a landscape with conservation corridors as
connecting links to existing protected areas (total number: 12; total area: 5,904 sq.km.) in the
Kangchenjungha complex that spread over a wide spectrum of ecological zones in eastern
Nepal, Darjeeling and Sikkim in India and western Bhutan. The landscape provides contiguous
habitat and unique situation where within a 100 km N-S transect, habitats range from Tropical
to alpine vegetation.
One recent example of application of landscape approach in Nepal is Kailash Scared
Landscape Conservation Initiative (CDB-TU 2010). The Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL)-
Nepal complex is a part of the proposed trans-boundary landscape with the international
boundaries with China and India. This trans-boundary landscape totals about 31,252 sq km of
area around Mount Kailash, of which 42.5% falls in Nepal, 34.7% in China and 22.8% in India.
The proponents of the initiative have set three categories as primary criteria for delineation,
viz. (i) ecological, (ii) cultural, and (iii) planning and management. However, in application
only the third criterion of management is in effect as the KSL-Nepal includes four districts
Baitadi, Darchula, Bajhang and Humla, where Baitadi, a mid-hill district does not fit with the
rest three high mountain districts. On the other hand, districts such as Bajura, Mugu are not
included in the complex, though they contain similar geographic and cultural settings like that
of Darchula and other high mountain districts. The application of landscape concept in KSL-

14. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 11
Nepal, thus, indicates the fact that the concept has much been used with development motives
following the existing district administrative set-up.
The main contribution of these authors has been to argue for the inclusion of more areas for
conservation outside the existing protected areas due to endangerment of particular flora,
fauna, ecological and sometimes even cultural processes.
A review of landscape conservation approach in Nepal reveals a heavy commitment to the
social dimensions of conservation, ways of eliciting, sustaining and, if possible, enhancing the
effectiveness of local communities to rehabilitate and restore the human altered landscape
matrices outside the protected areas of national parks and conservation areas for maximal
ecosystem health (WWF/Nepal, 2004; NPC/UNDP/UNEP, 2010; Gurung, 2006). The social
dimensions may include community forestry, buffer zone management in which local
communities are given a share of protected areas incomes to buy their cooperation with legal
guarantees of their rights. On a continuum of interventions, help may be offered in awareness
raising informal education and publicity, trainings for capacity building, investment in gender
mainstreaming, or such social and economic upliftment that addresses the root diversity of
biodiversity degradation: poverty and social inequity.
At other end maybe explicitly ecology and biological rehabilitation of such human altered
landscapes from anti poaching efforts to ensure safe corridor for migrating animals to the
rehabilitation of greenery and degraded landscape to the level of protected areas natural state.
One of the early investments in landscape management is the enhancement in the quality and
quantity of database to allow sophisticated management. This may include inventorying of
landscape close to its natural state as was done by Bhuju et al. (2000) in Churiya or drawing of
GIS map for transboundary landscape conservation for Mt Kailash by ICIMOD.
IUCN, WWF and Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) have
spearheaded the biology end of landscape conservation form tiger census and tiger ecology
and enhancement to restoration of tiger prey habitat in the protected areas and the reduction of
pressures on the protected areas by enhancing tree resources outside protected areas. The
Government of Nepal and UNDP have a more livelihood sustenance and social equity goals
within human altered matrix outside protected areas whose successful spinoff is the
restoration of ecological services to biodiversity and humans living there (WWF/Nepal, 2002).
Part III Promise of effective conservation
In a 2004 review paper, Budhathoki (2005) discusses the opportunities and challenges for
landscape conservation approaches in Nepal. He calls for a careful integration of national,
regional and local interests in planning and management of landscape conservation in order to
fulfill the integrated objectives of landscape level conservation.

15. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 12
Despite much experimental and supposedly secular and non-ideological experimentation with
different governance regimes, institutional innovations to co-opt the locals in the biodiversity
conservation across a landscape, there is much negative international and national baggage of
being perceived as external (outside country, outside village) interests on esoteric biodiversity
benefits over local (internal) needs to survive on the local natural resources without interfering
external legislation, policy, other demands.
On top of this is the changing milieu of decentralization in the country over the last few
decades giving birth to local rights for community forestry, local decentralization, and now
calls for institutionalizing federal decentralization of authority over the top-down command
and control management which INGO and central government and ministry have been doing
so far. In periods of political upheaval, all associated with earlier repressive power structures,
including military administered protected areas are rendered in to paper parks, i.e.
conservation only in reports with nothing on the ground.
Landscape approach is, therefore, an attempt to enlist a larger cross-section of people in
between the networks of protected areas in the cause of biodiversity conservation.
The emerging issues and options of Payment of Ecological Services (PES) of Biodiversity
Conservation, the implications of Climate Change policy initiatives such as Reduced Emissions
from Degradation and Deforestation (REDD), the National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA)
to effects of climate change on Nepal’s biodiversity, the implications of Federalism and the
trend towards decentralization of authority in nature conservation from the tradition of
centralized command and control policy administration just taking baby steps with
partnership with community participation in New Nepal. In one way new challenges and
opportunities will turn up. For instance, the trend towards federalism and the fears of political
fragmentation and decision making over a landscape opens up new opportunities for
developing payment for ecological services between and among landscape elements in country
for a federal set up or transboundary and global exchange as in REDD and NAPA climate
change adaptation protocols.

16. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 13
References
Adams, William. 1990. Green Development, Environment and Sustainable Development in the
Third World. Routledge, London
Boyce, S.G. 1995. Landscape Forestry. John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York
Bhuju, D.R. 2000. Nepal’s last hope for landscape level conservation. Habitat Himalaya 7(3): 1-4.
Resources Himalaya, Kathmandu
Bhuju, D.R. 2006. Ecology of the Churiya hills in Nepal Himalaya. In: Conservation Biology in Asia
(Eds. J.A. McNeely, T.M. McCarthy, A. Smith, L. Olsvig-Whittaker and E.D.
Vikramanayake). Society for Conservation Biology and Resources Himalaya Foundation.
Pp 62-67
Bhuju, D.R. 2010. The Churiya hills of Nepal: Land use change and conservation. In: Proceedings of
National Seminar on Churia Environmental Study (Eds. P.P. Paudel, I.C. Dutta, P. Gentle and
D.R. Bhuju) June 15, 2010 Kathmandu) organized by Dept. of Soil Conservation and
Watershed Management, Kathmandu
Brown, J., N. Mitchell and M. Beresford (Eds.). 2004. The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking
Nature, Culture and Community. IUCN, Gland and Cambridge
Budhathoki, Prabhu. 2005. Landscape conservation initiatives in Nepal: opportunities and
Challenge. In: The Protected Landscape Approach: Linking Nature, Culture and Community (Eds.
J. Brown, N. Mitchell and M. Beresford). IUCN, Gland and Cambridge. Pp 83-92
Budhathoki, P. 2003. A category V protected landscape approach to buffer zone management.
PARKS 13(2): 22–30. IUCN, Gland
CDB-TU. 2010. Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Initiative: Comprehensive Envrionmental
Monitoring Plan- Nepal (Final Draft). Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University,
Kirtipur, Kathmandu
Chaudhary, R.P. 2006. Cultural landscape and sustainable livelihood in response to global changes:
lessons from Manang, Trans-Himalayas, Nepal. In: Shifting Paradigms in Protected Area
Management (Eds. S.B. Bajracharya and N. Dahal). NTNC, Kathmandu. Pp. 123-131
Chettri, N. and E. Sharma. 2006. Prospective for developing a transboundary conservation
landscape in the Eastern Himalayas. In: Conservation Biology in Asia (Eds. J.A. McNeely,
T.M. McCarthy, A. Smith, L. Olsvig-Whittaker and E.D. Vikramanayake). Society for
Conservation Biology and Resources Himalaya Foundation. Pp 21-44
Groom, M. J., G.K. Meffe, C.R. Carroll. 2006. Species and Landscape Conservation Approach.
Principles of Conservation Biology. Third Edition. Sinauer. New York. Pg 419-466
Gurung, C.P. 2006. Landscape level conservation –Lessons from Terai Arc Landscape, Nepal
Gurung, C., T.M. Maskey, N. Poudel, Y. Lama, M.P. Wagley, A. Manandhar, S. Khaling, G. Thapa,
S. Thapa, and E.D. Vikramanayake. 2006. Sacred Himalayan Landscape, Conceptualizing,
Visioning and Planning for Conservation of Biodiversity, Cultures and Livelihoods in
Eastern Himalayas. In: Conservation Biology in Asia (Eds. J.A. McNeely, T.M. McCarthy, A.
Smith, L. Olsvig-Whittaker and E.D. Vikramanayake). Society for Conservation Biology and
Resources Himalaya Foundation. Pp 10-44
Gurung, H. 1971. Landscape pattern of Nepal. The Himalayan Review 12: 1-10
Gurung. H. 1989. Nature and Culture. Publ. S. Gurung, Kathmandu

17. Leveraging the landscapes conservation beyond the boundaries 14
Haufler, J.B. 1999. Strategies for Conserving Terrestrial Biological Diversity. Chapter 2. P. 17-35. In:
Practical approaches to the conservation of biological diversity (Ed. R.K. Baydack). Island Press,
Washington, D.C.
Johnston, R. J., D. Gregory, D.M. Smith. 1993. Landscape. The Dictionary of Human Geography.
Blackwell, London
Karki, J.B., S.R. Jnawali, R. Shrestha, M.B. Pandey, G. Gurung, M.T. Karki. 2009. Tiger and their prey
base abundance in Terai Arc Landscape Nepal. Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation,
Kathmandu
Naveh, Z. and A. Lieberman. 1984. Landscape ecology: theory and application. Springer-Verlag, New
York
NPC/UNDP/UNEP. 2010. Poverty-Environment Initiative. National Planning Commission,
Government of Nepal, Kathmandu
Redclift, M. 1992. The meaning of sustainable development. Geoforum
Sanderson, J. and L. D. Harris (eds.). 2000. Landscape Ecology: A Top-Down Approach. Lewis
Publishers, Boca Raton, Florida
Saving Wild Tigers. 2005. Save the Tiger Fund’s Conservation Strategy 2005 – 2010
Sharma, E., N. Chettri, J. Gurung, B. Shakya. 2007. The Landscape Approach in Biodiversity
Conservation: A Regional Cooperation Framework for Implementation of the Convention
on Biological Diversity in the Kangchenjunga Landscape, ICIMOD, Kathmandu
Thapa, G.J. and B. Basnet. 2006. Role of Barandabhar corridor forest in landscape level
conservation. In: Shifting Paradigms in Protected Area Management (Eds. S.B. Bajracharya and
N. Dahal). NTNC, Kathmandu. Pp. 34-45
Troll, C. 1939. Luftbildplan und ökologische Bodenforschung (Aerial photography and ecological
studies of the earth). Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde, Berlin: 241-298.
Turner, M.G., R.H. Gardner and R.V. O’Neill. 2001. Landscape Ecology: In Theory and Practice.
Springer-Verlag, New York
Wikramanayake, E., M. McKnight, E. Dinerstein, A. Joshi, B. Gurung and D. Smith. 2004. Designing
a conservation landscape for tigers in human-dominated environments. Conservation Biology
18: 839-844
WWF/Nepal. 2002. TAL Annual Report. WWF/Nepal, Kathmandu
WWF/Nepal. 2004. TAL Annual Report. WWF/Nepal, Kathmandu
Yonzon, P. 2001. The Inseparable Tibetan Landscape of Nepal. Habitat Himalaya 8 (2): 1-4. Resources
Himalaya, Kathmandu