Below you will find photo collections of places from around the world. All images are the property of Rhenda Glasco. Contact me with questions regarding use, reproduction, or purchase of any of the pictures.
(03/19/2012)
A single forest corridor links two of Nepal's great wildlife areas: Chitwan National Park and the Mahabharat mountain range, also known as the "little Himalayas." The Barandabhar Forest Corridor (BFC) has become essential for the long term survival Nepal's Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) and Bengal tigers (Panthera tigris tigris). Yet, according to a new paper published in mongabay.com's open access journal Tropical Conservation Society (TCS), the corridor is imperiled by deforestation, a highway, and inconsistent management policies.
(01/10/2012)
As rhinos again fell to poachers in record numbers in 2011, there was one bright-spot: Nepal. Not a single rhino was killed by poachers in the Himalayan nation, home to an estimated 534 greater one-horned rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis), categorized as Vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. Conservationists celebrated at Chitwan National Park, which holds the vast majority of the country's rhinos.
(11/10/2011)
A yew tree in the Himalayas that produces the chemotherapy drug, Taxol, is in danger of extinction. An update to the IUCN Red List, has moved the tree, named Taxus contorta, from Vulnerable to Endangered. Overharvesting for medicine and fuelwood have placed the species in serious danger.
(05/11/2011)
Few animals face as violent, as well organized, and as determined an enemy as the world's rhinos. Across the globe rhinos are being slaughtered in record numbers; on average more than one rhino is killed by poachers everyday. After being shot or drugged, criminals take what they came for: they saw off the animal's horn. Used in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which claims that it has curative properties, rhino horn is worth more than gold and cocaine on the black market. However, science proves all this cash and death is based on a lie. 'There is no medicinal benefit to consuming rhino horn. It has been extensively analyzed in separate studies, by different institutions, and rhino horn was found to contain no medical properties whatsoever,' says Rhishja Larson.
(04/27/2011)
Good news for rhinos is rare recently, but a new census shows that Nepal's one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) population has increased by 23% since 2008 even in the face of poaching. In total 534 rhinos survive in Nepal, a rise of 99 individuals from 3 years ago.
(12/27/2010)
Two studies investigated the scale and potential threat of continued trade in red pandas and found that while reports are low, the occurrence of isolated incidents may be enough to threaten species survival.
(11/09/2010)
Highlighting the poaching crisis facing tigers, a new report by the wildlife trade organization, TRAFFIC, found that from 2000-2010 authorities have confiscated the parts of 1,069 tiger individuals, many of them dead. The tigers, or their body parts, were confiscated from 11 of the species' 13 range countries, according to the report entitled Reduced to Skin and Bones. Yet the number only hints at the total number of tigers (Panthera tigris) vanishing in the wild due to the illegal trade in tiger parts for traditional Asian medicine and decorative items, such as skins.
(06/23/2010)
Nepal has announced a two month ban on logging throughout the mountainous country, reports the AFP. The ban was issued after officials received reports of alarming deforestation in lowland areas; according to one official over 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of forest was lost in a few months, more forest than was lost from 2000-2005.
(03/02/2010)
The rare Indian rhinoceros is not safe from poachers even in national parks. In Nepal's world renowned Royal Chitwan National Park, twenty-four Indian rhinos (Rhinoceros unicornis) have been poached since the last census was taken in 2008. The most recent one was killed last Thursday. Approximately 372 Indian rhinos survive in the park, and the population is in decline.
(11/25/2009)
Rhino poaching has hit a fifteen-year high, and the rising price for black-market rhino horn is likely the reason why. For the first time in a decade rhino horn is worth more than gold: a kilo of rhino horn is worth approximately 60,000 US dollars while gold is a little over 40,600 US dollars.
(11/10/2009)
A group of nations especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change have released a declaration calling for developed countries to keep CO2 emission below 350 parts per million (ppm) and to give 1.5 percent of their gross domestic product to aid developing nations in adapting to the myriad impacts of climate change.
(09/07/2009)
Apple's release of its new operating system, dubbed "Snow Leopard", is helping raise awareness of the plight of one of the world's most endangered big cats, reports the Snow Leopard Trust, a group working to protect the real-life snow leopard in its mountainous habitat across Central Asia.
(08/10/2009)
Scientists from a variety of organizations have found over 350 new species in the Eastern Himalayas, including a flying frog, the world’s smallest deer, and a gecko which has walked the earth for 100-million-years, according to a new report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The report, entitled Where World’s Collide, warns that these rare biological treasures, as well as numerous other species, are threatened in the Eastern Himalayas by climate change.
(07/09/2009)
Rhino poaching rates have hit a 15-year-high as a consequence of demand for horns for use in traditional medicine, according to new report published by the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC. Asia-based criminal gangs run the illegal trade.
(05/19/2009)
The population growth rate in the Asia-Pacific region has dropped to 1.1 percent, according to the Statistical Yearbook for Asia and the Pacific 2008, compiled by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). The 1.1 percent growth rate is the lowest in the developing world.
(10/28/2008)
The snow leopard (Panthera uncia) is one of the rarest and most elusive big cat species with a population of 4,500 to 7,500 spread across a range of 1.2 to 1.6 million kilometers in some of the world's harshest and most desolate landscapes. Found in arid environments and at elevations sometimes reaching 18,000 feet (5,500 meters), the species faces great threats despite its extreme habitat. These threats vary across its range, but in all countries where it is found — Afghanistan, Bhutan, China, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and possibly Myanmar — the species is at risk. In some countries snow leopard are directly hunted for their pelt, in others they are imperiled by depletion of prey, loss of habitat, and killing as a predator of livestock. These threats, combined with the cat's large habitat requirements, means conservation through the establishment of protected areas alone may not be enough save it from extinction in the wild in many of the countries in which it lives. Working to stave off this fate in half a dozen of its range countries is the Snow Leopard Conservancy. Founded by Dr. Rodney Jackson, a biologist who has been studying snow leopard in the wild for 30 years, the Conservancy seeks to conserve the species by "promoting innovative grassroots measures that lead local people to become better stewards of endangered snow leopards, their prey, and habitat."
(07/24/2008)
Fourteen countries have been selected by the World Bank to receive funds for conserving their tropical forests under an innovative carbon finance scheme.
(07/02/2008)
Nepal's tiger population have plummeted due to poaching and a booming trade in their parts, according to a government survey released Tuesday.
(11/05/2007)
Small changes to the management of wildlife reservers in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal could dramatically boost endangered tiger populations, reports a new study published in the journal Biological conservation.
(09/25/2006)
24 people were killed in a helicopter crash in Nepal on Saturday September 23rd. Seven of the victims were staff members of WWF, a leading conservation group. The helicopter was carrying them from a conservation site at Ghunsa, in the remote eastern mountains of Nepal, according to WWF.
(08/25/2006)
New research into climate change in the Western Himalaya and the surrounding Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains could explain why many glaciers there are growing and not melting. The findings suggest this area, known as the Upper Indus Basin, could be reacting differently to global warming, the phenomenon blamed for causing glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal and India, to melt and shrink.
Nepal has a long history that has extended for millennia. The Kirati were one of the first Nepali groups known to historians, having migrated from the east in the 7th or 8th century BC. Lord Gautam Buddha was born in Lumbini, Nepal circa 563 BC and the Emperor Ashoka ruled over a vast empire that included North India and the southern Terai region of present-day Nepal (although the hilly and mountainous regions were not a part of Ashoka's Empire) in the 1st century BC. By 200 AD, the Buddhist empire was displaced by resurgent Hindu fiefdoms, such as the Licchavi dynasty.
Around 900, the Thakuri dynasty succeeded the Licchavi era and was eventually superseded by the Malla dynasty, which ruled until the 18th century. In 1768, the Gorkha king, Prithvi Narayan Shah, captured Kathmandu. In 1814, Nepal fought the Anglo-Nepalese War with the British East India Company, which ended with the 1816 Sugauli Treaty, in which Nepal gave up Sikkim and the southern Terai, and the British retreated. After Nepali Gurkhas aided the British in quashing the Indian Sepoy Mutiny in 1857, most of the Terai territories were returned to Nepal.
The Shah dynasty was cut short in 1846, when Jung Bahadur Rana seized control of the country after assassinating several hundred princes and chieftans in Kathmandu's Kot Massacre. Ranas ruled as hereditary prime ministers until 1948, when British India achieved independence. India propped up King Tribhuvan as Nepal's new ruler in 1951 and sponsored the Nepali Congress Party. Tribhuvan's son, King Mahendra, dissolved the democratic experiment and declared that a "partyless" panchayat system would govern Nepal. His son, King Birendra, inherited the throne in 1972 and continued the panchayat policy until 1989, when "Jana Andolan" (People's Movement or Democracy Movement) forced the monarchy to accept constitutional reforms. In May 1991, Nepal held its first election in nearly 50 years. The Nepali Congress Party and the Communist Party of Nepal received the most votes. No party has held power for more than two consecutive years since. Critics argue that the governmental reforms did not appreciably improve the political order, because the new government was characterised by extreme corruption bordering on kleptocracy.
In February 1996, one of the Maoist parties started a bid to replace the parliamentary system with a socialist republic, through a Maoist revolutionary strategy known as People's war. This has since grown into a civil war and has resulted in the deaths of about 10,000 people. According to official Nepal government accounts, on June 1, 2001, the Heir Apparent Crown Prince Dipendra went on a killing spree in the royal palace in a violent response to his parents' refusal to accept his choice for a wife. He apparently shot and killed his parents, King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, as well as his brother, sister, two uncles and three aunts, before turning the gun on himself. His suicide attempt was not immediately successful, however, and although in a comatose state, he was proclaimed the king (in accordance with Nepalese tradition) in his hospital bed. He died three days later. See Dipendra of Nepal.
Following King Dipendra's death, his uncle (King Birendra's brother, King Gyanendra, was proclaimed king on 4 June. Shortly afterwards, he declared martial law and dissolved the government. Gyanendra deployed Nepal's military in a destructive civil war with the Maoist insurgents, the Nepalese People's War.
Pictures were taken by Rhett A. Butler, copyright 2008. While these photos are the property of mongabay.com, it may be permissible to use them for non-commercial purposes (like powerpoint presentations and school projects), provided that the images are not altered in any form. Please read this for more details. If you are interested in using an image in a publication please contact me.
