Nepal Without Poaching

Question Four. Pick one of the solution articles (other than your own) that resonated with you and discuss/explain what about that solution impressed you. Word count: 400

My favorite solution article was “A Full Year in Nepal Without Poaching” published in National Geographic and presented by Sarah Farinelli. The article describes how on March 3, 2014 Nepal celebrated 365 days with zero poaching within their borders, a second year of success. This means that not a single rhino has been poached within their borders for two, non-consecutive years. Their success is due to a nationwide initiative to stop illegal poaching at both the local and national levels.

One of the reasons this initiative has been so successful is because parks and ecotourism have developed to benefit local communities through employment and shared revenue. This has made the local people value local wildlife more alive than dead. This is important, because the article demonstrates how conservation strategies must be enacted on a local level to succeed. It is not enough to ask people to conserve wildlife for the sake of conservation. If local people can only support their livelihoods by killing flora and fauna, then that is what they will do. What needs to be done to protect biodiversity is a value change, where there is more value in protecting wildlife than killing it.

All conservation biologists want people to see nature for its intrinsic value. However, scientists cannot just dictate the people should value something because they say so. Instead, local people have to find their own meaning in nature. Therefore, by attaching a utilitarian value to wildlife, such as money or ecotourism in Nepal, conservationists give people a tangible starting point from which they can learn to value nature in different