Chitwan and the legacy of Tharus

Ramprit Yadav was a ranger working in Chitwan in the late 1960s before Chitwan National Park (CNP) was established. He later became a warden of CNP. “In 2026 BS (1969),” he told me, “our team conducted a survey to establish the national park without consulting the Tharus of Chitwan.” He thinks this was a mistake. CNP officials should have consulted the Tharus because their traditional practices helped create a habitat for Chitwan’s famous rhinos and tigers.

Yadav credits the Tharus for teaching him about conservation.“In 1973, when I started working as a member of the national park, I was only 22 years old. I had only read about trees and plant conservation in college courses. For the first 10-15 years, I learned how to conserve wildlife from the indigenous Tharus of Chitwan, which was very useful in conserving wildlife.'”

When CNP was created in 1973, the army prevented Tharu men and women who lived nearby from using the areas inside the park that they had relied upon and cared for, for generations. In 2003, the park was expanded in the east by removing Padampur VDC, where 10,000 people, mostly the Tharus, lived.  When we look at the history of Chitwan, we see that Tharu traditional methods helped make Chitwan a good area for wildlife in two ways: Wetland management and grassland management. After removing the Tharus, the park wetlands and grasslands suffered. That meant the Tharus suffered and so did rhinos and tigers. Conservationists like to talk about “win-win” scenarios. This was “lose-lose.”

The indigenous Tharu community of Old Padampur had been cultivating the flatlands for generations by creating a canal from the Churia Hills to the south. The traditional way of irrigation from the canal brought tree leaves as manure to the farmlands, which helped greatly in enhancing agricultural production. After using the water they needed, the Tharus used to divert the leftover water inside the national park, which helped give new life to the park’s wetlands. The conservation of wetlands created a habitat for rhinos and birds.

Before 1973, the small ponds inside the forest were routinely dug out by the indigenous Tharus during Chaitra, Baishakh, and Jestha to make the ponds better for fishing. This practice helped in water conservation in the wetlands. But after the establishment of CNP in 1973, all these activities were stopped by the park officials and the small ponds dried up.

The eastern parts of Old Padampur encompassed Jitpur and Amelia, and the western part was Jayamangala, Bankatta, and Bhawanipur. At that time, as a result of the conservation of wetlands in the eastern parts of CNP, the rhino census report showed a good number of rhinos in that area. However, comparing the recent rhino census in 2021 to the time when Old Padampur was inhabited, the count has significantly decreased. In 2003, the park was expanded but the number of rhinos dropped.

Source: Rhino Count 2021

 

Paugi Chaudhary, a 70-year-old resident of Old Padampur, reminisces, “When I was in Padampur, I used to bring 10-15 kg of fish and 20-25 kg of Ghonghi (snails) from the paddy field in a day, but after the relocation from inside the park, all those things disappeared.”

Bal Singh Chaudhary (84) recalls, “When Old Padampur was inside the national park, there were 15-20 rhinos in one pond inside the park. With the removal of Padampur and other Tharu villages from the national park area in the late 1990s, all those large ponds have dried up.”

According to Ram Giri Chaudhary, a nature guide at CNP, “Nowadays, you can see 1-2 rhinos in the ponds inside the park only with difficulty.”

Before the establishment of the national park, each Tharu village used to have 300–400 domestic cattle (cows and oxen), and those cattle used to graze in the park’s grasslands. At that time, grasslands made up 20 percent of the park.

“Before the establishment of the national park,” says ex-warden Ramprit Yadav, “the indigenous Tharu people managed the national park in two ways: Firstly, they grazed their domestic animals inside the park and secondly, they harvested the grass for the construction of their traditional houses, once a year.”

Tharu people also used to set fire to the grassland. Only after lighting fire, it was easy to cut grass, and only after setting fire did new grass grow. This helped in forest management as well as in wildlife conservation. It created a habitat for rhinos and deer. Ramprit Yadav says, “Earlier, all Tharu houses were made of reeds, and they used to build temporary houses on the river banks for three months of the year, and cut and burn reeds in the forest during the three winter months—Mangsir, Poush and Magh. This helped a lot in managing the grasslands in the forest.”

According to Aashis Gurung, information officer for the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), “After burning the reeds, the calcium, magnesium, and nitrogen from the reeds mix with the soil, helping the new grass to grow. This is why the condition of the grasslands in the National Park is better where the grass is burned than where it is cut by machines.”

The ban on grazing cattle and cutting grass and reeds for house construction (imposed in 1973 and 2003), along with the ban on controlled burning, hurt the grasslands. A 2016 Chitwan National Park report shows only 6.42 percent of the grasslands remained. Grasslands are crucial for rhinos and other park wildlife. According to the director of NTNC, Chiren Pokharel, “Before removal of the Tharu community from the park, the population of rhino and other animals in that area was statistically good, but after the displacement (of Tharu communities), the number of rhinos and other animals in the same area has gone down.”

It is true that for many years after 1973, Tharu and other local people were allowed into the park to burn and cut grass for 15 days a year. That window for cutting was reduced as time went by. During the Maoist civil war, cutting was stopped altogether. Afterwards, the grasslands really suffered.

It was not only the rhino who suffered from the loss of grasslands; birds also suffered. According to Ramesh Chaudhary, former chair of the Bird Education Society, Sauraha, “Birds that are found only in short (siru) grasslands, such as Bengal Florican, Lesser Florican, Selender-bellied Babbler and Jerdon's Babbler have disappeared from Chitwan.”

The main food for these birds, insects, are found in short (siru) grasslands. Those foods were found in the dung and feces of domestic animals grazing in the jungle. Many people believe that removing the Tharus from CNP will be helpful for biodiversity and wildlife conservation, but so far, it has turned out to be just the opposite. This is because CNP officials didn’t understand the knowledge of Chitwan’s indigenous Tharu people in managing wetlands and grasslands. Without Tharu management, Chitwan’s wetlands and grasslands have disappeared, reducing habitat for rhinos and deer and other wildlife.

Last year, when the census showed that the number of Chitwan’s tigers had nearly tripled, the Government of Nepal and the donor agencies were widely applauded at the national and international level. But the indigenous Tharu people, who were displaced from their ancestral land to make the park and who suffer disproportionately from wildlife killings and crop raiding, were not acknowledged anywhere despite their traditional conservation practices that helped make Chitwan a suitable habitat for wildlife like tigers, rhinos and deer.