Conservation history: ‘A Boy from Siklis’ by Manjushree Thapa

On 22 September 2006, a ceremony was organised to inaugurate the shift from locally managed to locally owned forests in the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project (KCAP), in the northeastern tip of Nepal. Little expense was spared in promoting the handover – the first of its kind in the country – with a high-level group of ministers, conservation pioneers and other environmentalists flown in for the event. The following morning, a helicopter took a select few through a narrow gorge to the remote village of Ghunsa, for more liturgy and festivity. Yet in a grievous turn on the way back, the helicopter crashed and killed all 24 passengers on board.

Many exemplary figures were seated in that helicopter, including the one who had organised the trip – Chandra Gurung, the director of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the financial and technical promoter of KCAP. Gurung had long believed in good publicity as a tool to achieve conservation work. And so, he was present at the momentous occasion along with some of his closest friends and mentors, former tourism minister and ground-breaking geographer, Harka Gurung; the previous head of WWF, Mingma Norbu Sherpa; and the "first warden of Nepal's first national park", Tirtha Man Maskey. "The handover was history in the making… conservation history!" writes Manjushree Thapa in her new book on Gurung's life and legacy, commissioned by the Chandra Gurung Conservation Foundation and supported by the WWF. This is not mere hyperbole.