The Terai Arc Landscape Project (TAL)

Bringing people and nature together for mutual benefits

The Terai Arc Landscape project (TAL) covers the area indicated with green in the area map that also shows protected areas, corridors, and bottlenecks. Protected areas include national parks, wildlife reserves and buffer zones around them. Buffer zones are part of the system of protected areas: they are not protected areas themselves, but local communities are encouraged to carry out activities that benefit the management of the protected area.

Buffer zones are inhabited by local people, who receive support from projects in sustainable use of their community forests and to conduct other conservation practices. Buffer zones are managed through a locally elected management council, which is authorized to receive revenue up to 50% of the total revenue collected by the protected area in a fiscal year. Buffer zones use this fund for supporting the livelihood of the local people or conservation of the local forest resources in order to reduce the pressure in the core areas.

A science-based approach
Corridors and bottlenecks are not protected areas, but critical areas which link two or more protected areas within or across the boarder. These areas are considered critical for the movement of large mammals like tiger and elephant. Since they are in different stages of degradation and fragmentation, immediate intervention is necessary in order to maintain their ecological function intact.

Restoration and community management of the forest has been considered as major interventions of TAL in such critical areas. Other interventions are reducing pressure in forest areas through the use of alternate energy, income generation activities and conservation education among others. Identification of critical areas has been done with the help of satellite images and field verification for the threats. Therefore, it is a science-based approach.

Fresh ideas
"The Terai Arc Landscape Project, or TAL, is a new approach in conservation", says Dr. Chandra Gurung, Country Representative for WWF Nepal. It is one of the first landscape-level programmes in Asia involving a very large geographical area, implementing a wide variety of measures to promote conservation along with the well being of local people.

Local communities - a key ally
The TAL covers 11 protected areas in India and Nepal and large non-protected areas between them. Among the non-protected areas are corridors and bottlenecks that are critical for wildlife movement from one protected area to another and maintain a sufficient gene flow, crucial for the long-term survival of endangered species. "Forests in corridors and bottlenecks will be managed by the local communities themselves, and the local communities will also benefit from them", says Gurung.

The importance of non-protected areas
"In previous decades, when we talked about conservation, it was only about protected areas", says Program Officer Shubash Lohani of WWF Nepal. "People were not allowed to collect resources in them, and they did not have a good feeling about conservation. Thus, the concept of buffer zones was created, and the first buffer zone was established in 1996 in Chitwan National Park."

Buffer zones break down the abrupt barrier between a conservation area and the surrounding communities. The sharp boundary itself is often a big problem, as people outside the park can see easily the natural resources they might desperately need, but are not allowed to touch them.

Buffer zones are located around protected areas, and local communities living in the buffer zones receive assistance in sustainable use of land and forest resources, as well as up to half of the park revenue to use for the conservation and sustainable management of the resources they have in the buffer zones.

Taking people alongside
Take Suklaphanta Wildlife Reserve, for example. "There are 100,000 people living in the buffer zone", says Tika Ram Adhikari, Chief Warden of the Wildlife Reserve. "The forests situated in the buffer zone are owned by the government. Now we are going to hand them over to local communities as buffer zone community forests."

Sustainable use is promoted in many ways: "In the TAL project, we provide support for people to run tree nurseries, and we encourage them to plant trees on both private grounds and community forests", says Adhikari.

Empowering women
"We also offer training in plumbing, cycle maintenance and veterinary services, and give small grants or kind support for piggery or livestock, depending on the interests of people. We promote the use of biogas instead of firewood, and we provide women's literacy and training on their rights. If someone is injured by a wild animal, we have developed mechanism to provide money for medical support, and if someone is killed, there is a compensation mechanism to the family."

Adhikari has noted remarkable changes in the course of years. Local people now support conservation eagerly, and rural women have gained more self-esteem. "The attitude of women has changed as they have become literate, got responsibility for management and got the feeling of ownership."

A transboundary cooperation
As the Terai-Duar savanna and grasslands is an ecoregion situated both on Nepalese and on Indian territory, the TAL project also is a transboundary conservation endeavour between Nepal and India. There are separate, complementary conservation programs implemented in each of these two countries, and the two sides work together on several cross-cutting issues.