The Terai Arc Landscape Project (TAL) - Partners

The power of cooperation

Combine the efforts of a few dozen organizations, a few government bodies, and thousands of local volunteers, and you can have success stories that none of these could even dream of if working alone.

The TAL is an umbrella of several partners:

• Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation
• Department of Forests
• Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation
• Other government agencies
• King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation
• Community Forest User Groups and their federations
  
• Buffer Zone User Groups and their federations
• Local Non-Government Organizations
• International Non-Government Organizations (IUCN, CARE Nepal, Winrock International, and IDE)
• Donor Agencies (UNDP, USAID, SNV, DFID)

WWF Nepal Program Office is the WWF body acting in planning and in the field. WWF US, WWF UK and WWF Finland, WWF Netherlands, and WWF Germany assist with financial support.

Participation of local communities is a key to success
And then there is one more group, without whom everything would have been impossible. "There are 6.7 million people living in the Terai area", reminds Program Officer Shubash Lohani of WWF Nepal. "If you want to work for forests and wildlife, you have to work with people too, promoting better and sustainable livelihoods."

"In all the activities that are carried out in buffer zones, local communities and buffer zone user groups are the ones that implement the activities", explains Project Co-Manager Tilak Dhakal of WWF Nepal. "Inside protected areas, park staff - working for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation - do the implementing. WWF is only a facilitator and monitor."

"One of the reasons why WWF can still work despite the insurgency is exactly that: because we work through communities. Many other international non-government organizations have had to stop working in Nepal because of the insurgency."