The government had decided to deploy NA personnel to guard the country´s newest national park a year ago. [break]But the NA has said it will take charge of the park only after the Department of National Park and Wildlife Reserve (DNPWC), which oversees all protected areas including the BNP, provides essential facilities in the area.
“We have not refused to protect the park. However, we can not send our soldiers there without ensuring basic facilities like water and electricity,” says Raj Rana, chief of national park and wildlife conservation directorate of the NA, adding, “We can not always rely on locals for basic needs. We will send our soldiers the day these basic facilities are made available.”
The DNPWC has already built five new security posts for the NA personnel inside the BNP, which covers an area of 550 square kilometer apart from the 343 sq km-large buffer zone, at the cost of Rs 10 million. “Basic facilities can be made available in no time.
The NA, which has an enviable reputation of serving under adverse conditions, is itself capable of managing such facilities. It should not be a big deal,” says Tulsi Ram Sharma, warden of the BNP. “The longer the NA takes, the higher the chances of poaching.”
A small group of army soldiers has been on duty at one of the five newly-built security posts in Ovari of Mahadevpuri VDC of Banke. However, Sharma says the post alone cannot protect the park. “We need no less than a battalion.”
The government has deployed the Shamsher Dal battalion of the NA for guarding the BNP, which currently has its base in Gulariya, the district headquarters of Bardiya, some 119 km from the BNP.
Although the NA cites the unavailability of basic amenities as the reason for its reluctance in moving to the BNP, authorities at Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation (MoFSC) say the actual motive of the army is something else.
“A Banke-based battalion of Armed Police Force (APF) has been patrolling the buffer zone of the BNP. And, the NA believes that two armed forces should not be on duty in the same territory,” a MoFSC official says. An NA army officer, unwilling to be named, confirmed what the MoFSC official said.
However, there no effort has been taken by the government to solve the issue.
“A meeting of secretaries from home, defense, forest and finance ministry can resolve this issue,” the MoFSC official said. “However, all of them have remained indifferent.” Worse still, of the total 154 posts of government officials sanctioned for the BNP, the DNPWC has managed to send only 36 officials there as of now.
The BNP, recognized as a gift to the earth in 1998, combined with adjacent Bardiya National Park, forms a part of one of the most significant trans-boundary tiger habitats of the world. In Bardiya Park alone, 18 tigers were traced in a 2009 census.
The latest statistics puts the number of endangered tigers in Nepal at 155.
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