Climate change impact on Nepal’s wildlife is already visible. It’s high time stakeholders made efforts to stop this

Nepal is ranked the world’s fourth most vulnerable country to climate change impacts. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DOHM) in 2017 studied Nepal’s climatic trends from 1971 to 2014 and found that the country’s average annual maximum temperature climbed by 0.056 degrees celsius. Climate change’s negative impacts can be distinct in a variety of sectors across the country, particularly in the wildlife sector. With a wide altitudinal range from 60 to nearly 8849 m, coupled with heterogeneous climatic and topographic conditions, Nepal is considered a global wildlife hotspot, with 1.1 per cent of the world’s known fauna. More than 23 per cent of the land area has been declared as a protected area in Nepal.

Climate change has popped up as a top threat to wildlife in recent decades across the globe. The current global climate shift has already begun to affect wildlife assemblages and ecosystem dynamics, and Nepal’s wildlife is no exception. Climate-induced events have impacted Nepal’s wildlife both within and outside the protected areas. The principal impacts of climate change on Nepal’s wildlife include: shifting in spatial distribution and suitable habitats of species along the altitudinal gradients; reduction in population size of species due to illicit trade and poaching; increased forest fire, floods, wildlife diseases and invasive species; and shrinkage of habitat and local extinction. Although all wild species, from small to large, are vulnerable to climate change in Nepal, few research works have been documented to establish the impact of climate change on wildlife such as on one-horned rhinoceros, Asian elephant, Himalayan musk deer, blue sheep, Bengal tiger, snow leopard, common leopard and bats.