UN award for Nepal’s tiger range restoration spurs euphoria amid challenges

Nepal’s pioneering landscape-level ecosystem restoration initiative, aimed at creating dispersal space for tigers, has been globally recognised for its efforts to fight and reverse ecosystem degradation. Yet sustaining the success is rife with hurdles such as infrastructure development, human-wildlife conflict , political instability and climate change uncertainties , experts caution.

Launched in 2004, the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) initiative, which led to the restoration of 66,800 hectares (165,000 acres) of forest and nearly tripling of the endangered Bengal tiger population, has been honoured as one of seven U.N. World Restoration Flagships by the U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-30) program jointly led by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization.