The Nepal Army, Forest department of Nepal and Uttarakhand Forest department have joined hands to deal with wildlife trafficking and poaching along the long and porous India-Nepal border. Side by side, the agencies concerned have also agreed to focus on wildlife conservation reviving the ancient northern elephant corridor stretching from Dehradun to Boom-Brahmdev in Nepal via the hill states' Terai landscape. More so revival of the Shukla-phatak elephant corridor from the Terai-east forest division's Khatima region in Udham Singh Nagar to the Nepal border has also figured on the charter of wildlife conservation measures proposed by the agencies concerned of the two neighbouring countries.
More so, to achieve these aforesaid goals the officials concerned of the two nations have also agreed to conduct joint patrolling along India-Nepal border sharing important information about anti-wildlife activities that have been reported from this front of late.The wildlife experts and non-Government organisations who have been working on the wildlife conservations on this Himalayan front covering India and Nepal, have welcomed this development.
The matter of concern is that the India- Nepal border along Uttarakhand's Champawat and Udham Singh Nagar areas has turned out to be a safe pass of late for the poachers and wildlife traffickers for execution of their nefarious design, maintained the wildlife experts.The Haldwani forest division and the Terai-east forest divisions of the Uttarakhand forest department are the key players in carrying out all the wildlife conservation measures jointly with the Nepal Army and the Nepal forest department concerned.
This is a measure development to have that kind of joint trans-border wildlife conservation mechanism with Nepal's army and forest department of Nepal, said CS Sanwal, Divisional Forest Officer (DFO), Haldwani forest division, while talking to The Pioneer.We have already had a meeting with our Nepali counterparts in this regard recently, added, Sanwal. Both the sides have agreed to jointly work on revival of the Boom-Brahmdev elephant and Shuklaphata elephant corridors along the India-Nepal border, curbing wildlife poaching/smuggling and joint patrolling, he further said.
To give concrete shape to these plans, the agencies concerned from both sides have also reached an agreement to have bilateral meeting regularly once in three months, said the official concerned.Among others Bed Kumar Dhakal, Chief warden of the Shuklaphata wildlife reserve Nepal, lt. Colonel Shrawan K Bista from the protection unit of the Nepal army were part of the meeting that we had with the Nepal agencies, added the DFO, Haldwani.