Wildlife & Nature
Nepal brought its one-horned rhino back from near-extinction — from 95 survivors in Chitwan to a thriving Terai population, through army patrols and…
By Laxman Rawal · Aug 25, 2026
Few conservation stories run as sharply against the grain as Nepal's greater one-horned rhino. Sixty years ago the animal was all but gone from the country — barely 95 survived in the Chitwan valley, hunted for their horns and squeezed out of a jungle being…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Around 1950 the Chitwan valley held roughly 800 rhinos. Then the lowlands opened up. Malaria, which had long kept the Terai thinly settled, was brought under control with DDT; tens of thousands of people moved south to farm the newly habitable jungle. By the…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
The response was decisive. In 1973 the government created Royal Chitwan National Park and, crucially, put the Nepal Army in charge of protecting it, backed by a dedicated rhino patrol and a network of guard posts. In 1984 Chitwan became a UNESCO World…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
By the turn of the century Chitwan was back up to 544 rhinos. The 2015 national census counted 645 across Nepal, of which 605 were in Chitwan — a jump of 21%, or 111 animals, in the four years from 2011. The most recent figures put Nepal's total at around…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
Poaching, remarkably, is no longer the main danger — the patrols and buffer zones have seen to that, and Nepal is now cited internationally for its anti-poaching record, with entire calendar years recorded in which not one rhino was lost to poachers. The…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
This is the part most visitors miss. Nepal is not only mountains — drop south from the Himalaya into the Terai and you are in rhino country, where dawn jeep drives and dugout-canoe floats put you within sight of grazing rhinos, wild elephants, gharial…
Travel Himalaya Nepal · News
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