January 2021

Mithila Wildlife Trust has been working for Wild Cat Conservation in Janajagriti Sundar, Janashrijansil, and Baghbhairav Community Forests in Nijgadh municipality, Bara with a focus on Tiger and Leopard. The program is supported by the Zoological Society of London and Wild Cat Conservation Alliance where the ZSL Parsa Field Office, Division Forest Office – Bara, Parsa National Park, and local communities have joined together to succeed the program. MWT has been focusing on community-based conservation and human-wildlife co-existence in Churia foothills since the establishment. We strongly believe that this is a community that spends 24 hours with the wildlife, thus, encouraging them and boosting their capacity to provide a natural habitat for them will be sustainable conservation. We strongly believe that “the more community knows about wildlife in their surrounding, the less conflict will be there”. Thus we have been working closely with the community residing in the Churia foothills. As the number of Wild cats is increasing in Parsa National Park (PNP), they are moving to the dense community forests in their surroundings to search for new and secure habitats for them. This is where our role starts. We work with the communities to aware of the natural behavior, hunting, and feeding behavior and their role and importance to maintain the natural ecosystem. This ensures that the community is well prepared and aware of the new members in their community forests. The existence of Tiger and Leopard in the community forests are making the community happier as they are mostly affected by Wild Boar and Blue Bull which is natural prey to them. Community interactions and awareness-raising activities in schools become more necessary as they are the one who enters inside the forest for several activities, be it, collecting fallen small branches of the tree for firewood or for forages to their animals. This becomes necessary to mention here that Baghbhairav Community Forest has restored 100-hectare river bank and Janajagriti Sundar Community Forest has restored 40-hectare river bank as a dense forest which is becoming one of the major habitats to several wildlife species in their forests including Tiger and Leopard. We are grateful to community school management, community members, and stakeholders for always being there to support us. We don’t know how to thank Mr. Prachanda Maharjan and Sandeep Chaudhary from the Zoological Society of London, Parsa Field Office during the implementation of Wild Cat Conservation Programs.