Mahendra Trust : Emerging Environmental Watchdog

The premises are cramped and claustrophobic, but it is a beehive of activity: a former auditorium boarded up to yield office space. It is the base camp of the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, a Nepali "NGO" on a ecological crusade (but burdened with a terrible logo, see below). It is mid-February, and the Trust´s staff of fourteen are in a tizzy keeping track of the its burgeoning responsibilities.

News has just come in by wireless that a rhino from the Chitwan jungle is heading south across the border into Bihar. Fallout continues from the Trust´s whistle-blowing on the the Bhrikuti Paper Factory, a day before it was to be inaugurated, for discharging untreated effluents into the Narayani river. There is discussion on how best to preserve the cloud forests of the Barun Valley in East Nepal, and follow-ups on a snow-leopard sttudy in the Shey-Phoksumdo National Park, a project to identify endangered Nepali plants, an appraisal of the red panda´s diminishing habitat, and the movement of 27 Tadio-collared gharials. (It was learnt later that the rhino had been shot by the Bihar police.)

In September, the Trust launched a unique conservation experiment in the Annapurna region, one that hqpes to balance the needs of a local population, trekking tourism and the fragile environment. In January, the Trust used cranes, trucks and good Nepali ingenuity to crate nine rhinos from the Chitwan Valley to the Bardia Wildlife Reserve in an attempt to provide alternative habitat as well as to minimise conflict with villagers.

The Trust was established by a Government Act in 1982 to fill a keenly felt need to supplement the conservation-related activities of HMG. As Prince Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah, Chairman of its Governing Board of Trustees told donors in 1984,have been unwise and unrealistic to ask HMG alone to grant funds to realise the prescriptions of the World Conservation Strategy, to which Nepal had subscribed.

"Our philosophy is development through conservation. We canot keep people apart while trying to preserve the environment," says Hemanta Mishra, Member Secretary of the Trust, just back from undergoing a multiple bypass operation in London. "How can you have national park isolated amidst a sea of human population? We must search for answers geared to our own situation and not copy models that might have done for national parks in colonial Africa half a century ago. If we fail to grasp that impoverished farmers outside our national parks need food, fuel, fodder and shelter, then everything will go."

Mishra is proud that it is under the Trust´s aegis that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for the first time got involved in population and development issues, in the Annapurna Conservation Area Project – which also represents the Trust´s attempt to implement its own philosophy. The ploughing back of trekking revenue directly into local conservation efforts.

Mingma Norbu, who co-ordinates the Project for the Trust, says people´s participation is essential if- the area is to escape the fate, of the degraded Everest trail. "We try not to talk conservation with the villagers; the stress is on hard economics", he says. In fact, his real challenge came not with the villagers of Annapurna but with Kathmandu officials loathe to allow grassroots control of forest and wildlife resources.

With a simple press release on the impact of the paper factory´s effluents on the Narayani´s riverine wildlife, the Trust has also emerged as a watchdog for the public. Whereas the conservation – minded groups in Nepal have been scattered, disorganised and weak-kneed to date, the Trust has the clout and seems willing to use it. "We have indeed evolved as. a watchdog for the public´s interest," says Mishra, "and we will be there to raise a voice if we feel uiat a highway alignment could easily bypass an existing forest; or if it is found that a paper mill in Nepalganj or Janakpur, or rubber factory in Gorkha are* not taking reasonable measures."
The Trust is an almost totally Nepali creation, from its conception to the present operations. It has overcome the genuine credibility problem that public-spirited Nepali ventures face abroad, particularly among the funders. The Trust has successfully raised project money from organisations like the WWF and the Smithsonian Institute, and individuals such as Netherlands Prince Bernhard (who provided US$10,000 for the rhino translocation).

While money is tight, the Trust is also facing a problem of talented people and of continuity in its work. As Prince Gyanendra told the trustees last year, "I am not satisfied with, the progress made in the speedy and systematic implementation of (the Trust´s) institutionalisation." He called for doing away with "discord and dissimilarity of thought" between the trustees and the secretariat.

As for the future, the Prince said that "the time has come for us to present ourselves to the Nepalese public more vigorously. The Trust must convince policy-makers, planners, aid agencies and the business community that, for their dreams to come true, there must be a built-in conservation component in all their projections."