India, Nepal cooperate to secure border wildlife
Even as ties between India and Nepal have strengthened in recent months, there is one area of bilateral cooperation that has not received much attention: Wildlife conservation. The two countries share a long border that is home to a vast array of flora and fauna, including some globally endangered species. Now, the two have joined hands to ensure that these rich and diverse natural habitats on the border are well protected. Several projects are in the pipeline, but the most recent is the functionalisation of the Boom-Brahmadev wildlife corridor.
Extending from the Haldwani forest division in Uttarakhand to the Kanchapur forest division in Nepal, the corridor is used by elephants, tigers and rhinoceroses who clearly have no regard for dotted lines drawn on a map by humans. The corridor serves as an important lifeline for the animals who would have otherwise been restricted to just one habitat — usually a protected area such as a tiger reserve or a wildlife sanctuary. As conservationists have been highlighting since the 1990s, protected areas alone are not good enough to save wildlife.
Animals must have the freedom to move from one area to another, or else, they will not thrive. The Boom-Brahmadev corridor itself is part of the larger Terai Arc landscape. Bounded by India's Yamuna on the west and Nepal's Bagmati to the east, this 12.3 million acre-region consists of about a dozen protected ecosystems on both sides of the border, including the famous Corbett National Park in India and the Parsa Wildlife Reserve in Nepal. However, the area is also under enormous human pressure, which has resulted in an increasing number of man-animal conflicts in recent years. Wildlife corridors, such as the Boom-Brahmadev connector, can help ease the pressure to a large extent.
The only problem is that while Governments have had a reasonable amount of success in setting up safe havens or protected areas, they have had a much harder time securing the corridors that connect two or more such areas — as the high number of elephants killed along the Dooars in North Bengal stands proof. The matter becomes more complicated when a natural corridor cuts across rails, roads and often international borders even.
The rail line connecting Siliguri Junction to Alipurduar Junction, for instance, knives right through forested area, as a result of which tuskers are routinely mowed down by speeding trains there. Similarly, the Boom-Bradmadev corridor sits in the middle of sensitive border posts that need to be inter-connected. Thankfully, security and wildlife officials from both sides of the border were able to work with conservationists to ensure that animal interests are also factored into national security plans. last year, the Sashastra Seema Bal, the Uttar Pradesh Public Works Department, and the State's Forest Department agreed to elevate road stretches at 16 sites and re-align three other sections to secure wildlife movement between India and Nepal.