The strategies for biodiversity conservation in Nepalese perspective has been listed below:
- Biodiversity use and conservation education
- Integrated health care
- Agroforestry
- Afforestation
- Cottage industry
- Communities involvement in Biodiversity Conservation
- Improved hearth for cooking
- Traditional agro-ecosystems and biodiversity conservation
- Keystone species and conservation
1. Biodiversity use and conservation education:
- Forest resources are rich in medicinal and food plants, other non-wood forest products, timber, fodder, fuelwood, thatch-grass, sabia-grass, etc. People directly or indirectly depend on these products.
- If we talk about majority of people, their main priority is harvesting the resources whereas conservation always remains the second priority.
- People should be aware about the direct and indirect benefits from the forest and their change in attitude is needed.
- Initiation of educational programs that comprises teaching of conservation topics and its extension to adult literacy and schools will bring beneficial change in people’s attitude.
- Increase in enrollment of children in schools by providing some kind of extra benefit on token basis should be implemented.
- Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in co-operation with local people can actively play an important role in conservation of protected areas in Nepal by publishing brochures in local language.
2. Integrated health care:
- After documentation of traditionally used plants, and selection of plants that are safe, effective and easily available or cultivated, these plants may be integrated into modern health care system.
- Fansworth under a joint UNICEF/WHO study investigation for health needs of developing world concluded that the combination of traditional with modern system health care is truly effective and affordable for low income groups.
- Development of an integrated health care system project in Madagascar which is funded by WWF has involved a team of people including traditional healers, ethnobotanists, medical doctors, and pharmacologists for sustainable utilization of the indigenous plants and return results to laboratory for analyses and to community members.
- An integrated program run by local Non-Government organization working at the grass-root level would aid to effectively motivate the community for integrated health care.
- Baudha-Bahunipati Family Welfare Project run by World Neighbors in Sindhupalchowk District, eastern Nepal has run an integrated program that comprise family planning adopted by 22% of fertile couples, and fertility rates reduced from 5.8 to 3.2 children per couple, built 55 new drinking water systems and 525 latrines, project now replicated in 38 villages where 153,000 people live.
3. Agroforestry:
- It combines growing trees along with agriculture or livestock or both on the same piece of land side by side.
- International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) defines agroforestry as collective name for land-use systems and practices where woody perennials are deliberately integrated with other crops or animals on the same land management unit.
- Agroforestry is usually practiced with the intention of developing a more sustainable form of land use that can improve farm productivity and welfare of the rural community.
- In current view, agroforestry provides ways to eliminate deforestation and land depletion and thus reduce poverty.
- The increasing integration of trees and crops into land-use system can be viewed as a passage towards forming an ecological niche that are occupied by several organisms, making the system ecologically stable, and biologically diverse.
- Agroforestry is a traditional indigenous form of land-use is practiced by many farmers in the Asia-Pacific region having 69% of world’s agricultural population and only 28% world’s agricultural land.
- Local people are greatly benefited from such indigenous system in Nepal.
- Emphasis on cultivation of indigenous and multipurpose forest trees with medicinal herbs should be given for the development of agroforestry.
4. Afforestation:
- Multipurpose tree including legumes are marvelous, multipurpose resources that can protect and stabilize the soil, save water, symbiotically fix atmospheric nitrogen, produce valuable wood and fodder, and certain proteins and lipids for diet.
- In the most degraded areas where trees are difficult to grow, attention should be given to the shrubs which are highly palatable to cattle, such areas are found in north of Jomsom of Nepal.
- In the midhills and the Terai, effort should be made to develop afforestation programs prioritizing popularization of indigenous trees including Sisso, Satisal, Siris.
5. Cottage industry:
- Plants resources such as bamboos, fiber plants, rattans, leaves which are used to develop cottage industries in Nepal.
- Some of the important forest resources used for cottage industries in Nepal are Bamboos (Dendrocalamus strictus, D. hamiltonii), Lokhta (Daphne papyracea and D. bholua), Munj grass (Saccharum bengalense), Sabai grass (Eulaliopsis binata).
- Trainings should be organized in order to improve traditional skills of the villagers involved in the occupation.
- High market values provide incentives to exploit the resources and often indiscriminately that their population have depleted drastically in wild.
- Thus, market for these goods must be developed carefully to ensure that the harvest rate doesnot exceed the regeneration rate.
6. Communities involvement in Biodiversity Conservation:
- As per rule, the forest and protected areas in Nepal are banned to public for collection of wood and fodder.
- Still, the collection of fuel-wood for household cooking and fodder for animals undertaking mostly by women and children are not fully restricted.
- Also, people who use forest daily chop down trees illegally for sale as fuel. They belong to poor and low-level families and they have no interest in implementing the recommendations of the forest committee.
- Promotion of the community-based resource management systems of indigenous people will help in accomplishing the conservation of indigenous knowledge for biodiversity conservation.
7. Improved hearth for cooking:
- Due to the rapid growth in population and lack of supply of indigenous energy sources in Nepal, the use of traditional energy sources has been extensively increased.
- In Nepal, the major sources of energy are fuelwood (68% of total consumption), agricultural residues (15%), animal dung (12%), petroleum fuels (3%), coal (0.7%), and electricity (0.6%).
- Over-exploitation of traditional energy resources, increasing demand due to population growth, and low level exploitation of commercial energy resources best decribes the current condition of Nepal’s energy resources.
- Forest being the indigenous source of fuelwood, the extraction of fuelwood is leading to the degradation of forest ultimately causing biodiversity loss.
- A thorough examination of the existing earthen hearths can ne made and efficient hearths can be popularized particularly in villages to reduce the energy consumption.
- Likewise, the marginal lands that can be used for afforestation by community people may decrease pressure in the forest. Besides, proper alternative should be searched in Nepal.
8. Traditional agro-ecosystem and biodiversity conservation:
- Highly diverse plant species are maintained in the farm.
- Recent patterns of agricultural development are depleting soils, genetic diversity, species diversity both in managed fields and surrounding habitats.
- Due to introduction of imported seed of crops, fertilizers and pesticides, traditional agro-ecosystems are under threat in Nepal.
- A decline in the crop yield has been gradually noticed in lack of sufficient chemicals which the country imports.
- To maintain the diversity and productivity of traditional genetic resources of agriculture, the government should promote and encourage the farmers to maintain traditional agro-ecosytems.
9. Keystone species and conservation:
- An important category of plants that tend to be overlooked in consideration of genetic conservation are ‘keystone’ or ‘indicator’ or ‘target’ species.
- These are species whose presence is important in maintaining the organization and diversity of an area and whose absence would significantly decline biodiversity of an area.
- Terborgh predicted that elimination of presumed keystone, ‘palm nuts, figs and nectars’ community type would affect predicted loss of ½ to ¾ of total bird and mammal biomass.
- Selection of indicator species to monitor the ecological viability of the region need to be identified, as their removal could either rise or reduce species diversity and affect optimum ecological balance in a region.
- In Nepal’s perspective, due emphasis should be given on research and traditional ecological knowledge to identify keystone species that will be used in biodiversity monitoring.