A Wild World That is No More

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The tarai used to evoke the image of steaming jungles and tall grasslands teeming with South Asia's "mega fauna" — rhinoceros, tiger, barasingha, elephants. Today, the image is one of fields and flatlands as far as the eye can see, punctuated by lone trees that speak for what only a few decades ago was one of the richest areas in the world.

 My first train ride, at the age of 12, was on the narrow gauge track from Amelekhganj in the inner tarai to Birgunj at the border. The slow-moving train meandered through the rolling sal forests of the char kosey jhadi, the 10 to 12 mile belt of unbroken jungle south of the low hills. The train chugged past stately trees laden with vines and teeming with chattering langur monkeys, and in the dark of the forests, one knew, lay the domain of the tiger and the rhino. Little did I know then that the trigger of the tarai's destruction and fragmentation was about to be pulled down. Highways, canals and settlements would spell the end of a whole kind of wilderness.

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Himal Southasian
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