Bharatpur, Nov 29: Training has been imparted to youths from settlements near the buffer zone of the Chitwan National Park and the Parsa National Park, Nepal, aiming to launch a campaign against wildlife poaching.
The youths are affiliated to the Youth Awareness Campaign to Prevent Wildlife Poaching and they have been trained on wildlife protection and prevention of poaching. Thirty youths associated with the Campaign under five buffer zone consumers committees are participating in the training organized at Madi, said Prakash Dhungana, the president of CNP Buffer Zone Management Committee.
According to him, the youths were imparted training on information gathering, raising public awareness and animal behaviour, among other topics, for forest and wildlife conservation. They were also trained on conservation methods used before this and on work that needed to be done in the coming days.
The training encompassed both theoretical and practical aspects of conservation, said Prem Paudel, the eastern sector coordinator of the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) Programme.
Around 500 youths are active in the Campaign in CNP area alone. On completion of the two-day training, the youths will train other youths, the women groups, community forest user groups and the general public in their home towns.
TAL Programme, in coordination with CNP, organized the training. The Programme was initiated in 2004. The overall goal of the TAL is to conserve the ecosystems of the Terai and Churia hills in order to ensure integrity of ecological, economic, and socio-cultural systems and communities.
The entire TAL extends for over 900 km from the Bagmati River, Nepal in the east to the Yamuna River in Uttaranchal, India in the west, with an area of 51,002 square kilometres. TAL-Nepal covers 24,710.13 km2 spread across 18 districts: Dadheldhura, Kanchanpur, Kailali, Bardia, Salyan, Surkhet, Banke, Dang, Arghakhachi, Kapilbastu, Rupendehi, Palpa, Nawalparasi, Chitwan, Makwanpur, Bara, Parsa and Rautahat.
