Biodiversity faces threats in Madhesh province due to lack of conservation support

Whenever someone talks to Dev Narayan Mandal about biodiversity and conservation in his native Madhesh province in Nepal, he remembers an incident that took place a few years ago.

“A river in the province had been flooded, and maybe it was for this reason a leopard was displaced,” says Mandal, the founder of Mithila Wildlife Trust. “The villagers thought it was a tiger, and as they had heard in the news about tigers killing people, they killed the animal thinking that it would kill them if it were allowed to roam around freely.”