- Nepal plans to hand over a zoo project that has been under discussion for nearly a decade to the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), a semi-governmental body that runs the country’s only operating zoo.
- The government has been setting aside roughly 15 million Nepali rupees($98,700) a year for a project estimated to cost 10 billion Nepali rupees($65.8 million), leaving it effectively frozen since its groundbreaking in 2016.
- The NTNC points to nearly three decades of zoo management experience, international partnerships and fundraising capacity as evidence it is the right fit for the job.
- Critics, however, point to financial struggles at its existing zoo, a politically controversial leadership appointment, and the death of an endangered red panda as reasons for concern.
KATHMANDU — Nepali officials are preparing to hand over the government’s ambitious new zoo to the country’s leading wildlife conservation body. Whether that body is up to the task is up for debate.
Discussions around the proposed zoo in Suryabinayak municipality in central Nepal, which would span 259 hectares (640 acres) of community-managed forests on the outskirts of Kathmandu, began in 2015. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in June 2016, attended by the then prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli. After that, only limited preparatory work such as fencing and planning documents moved forward.
The reason: lack of funds. Constructing and bringing it into operation is estimated to cost around 10 billion Nepali rupees($65.8 million). But the government has been allocating only around 15 million Nepali rupees ($98,700) a year towards it, mainly to pay for the staff’s salaries.
After the formation of the new government in March 2026, the then Ministry of Forests and Environment (now Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment) assigned a committee to look for ways to start work on the new zoo. The committee recently recommended that the project be handed over to the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), a semi-governmental body that already oversees the management of Nepal’s Central Zoo, in Kathmandu.
“The committee analyzed what would happen if the government ran it versus handing it to NTNC,” said Maheshwar Dhakal, joint secretary at Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment who led the committee. “The best option was creating a flexible policy environment for the trust to handle operations.”
A formal decision is yet to be made, but Dhakal said one is expected soon, but a concrete timeline is still in the works.
The scale of the new zoo that Nepal is envisioning is much bigger compared to the existing Central Zoo in Jawalakhel. While the planned zoo would span 245 hectares (605 acres) across seven community forests, the Central Zoo covers an area of 6 hectares (14.82 acres). To put it in perspective, the area could accommodate 2,072 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The trust also plans to build an animal treatment center on the remaining 14 hectares (35 acres).
The case for NTNC
Those backing the transfer to NTNC point at its track record. The organization, which was earlier named King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, has managed the Central Zoo since 1995. The zoo, originally founded in 1932 as a private collection of the then prime minister, now shelters 942 individual mammal, bird, fish and reptile of 127 species, according to its website. Earlier this year, the government signed a new 30-year management agreement with the NTNC to continue running it.
“We have long experience, tools and technicians that are second to none in Nepal,” said Gobinda Prasad Pokharel, conservation & information officer at NTNC. “We have worked in conservation awareness and education, we have the expertise to manage a facility of this scale, and we have collaborations with zoos abroad that no other organization here can match.”
Pokharel added that the trust can also manage animals such as elephants and rare exotic species that the government simply can’t provide on its own. He said the trust was confident it could mobilize the financing needed to make the project viable in ways the government had repeatedly failed to do.
NTNC is known to have institutional depth, said Ram Prasad Chaudhary, emeritus professor at Tribhuvan University. “No other organization in Nepal has equivalent experience managing a zoo, training wildlife keepers, or navigating the complex international agreements that govern the transfer of animals between accredited facilities,” he said.
The concerns
Chaudhary, a former member of the NTNC board of directors, however, argued that a 10-billion-Nepali-rupee ($65.8 million) project entails big financial challenges for the organization.
Financial issues have been a persistent challenge even at the trust’s existing facility. In March 2021, the Central Zoo launched an ‘Adopt an Animal’ campaign, asking members of the public to sponsor individual animals and cover their food, care and medication for a year as it struggled financially during the pandemic for lack of visitors. For critics, this raised a question: If the NTNC struggles to fund the upkeep of animals at a long-established zoo in the heart of Kathmandu, how would it manage a facility many times larger in a less accessible location?
Pokharel said the adoption campaign was a global best practice used by leading zoos worldwide, designed not only to raise funds but to deepen public engagement with conservation. Similarly, the trust plans to create an emergency fund to deal with situations when ticket sales plummet due to external reasons.
Governance concerns have also proven harder to deflect. In March of this year, the then interim prime minister, Sushila Karki, appointed her chief personal secretary, a political aide named Adarsha Shrestha, as chairperson of the trust. The move drew immediate and widespread condemnation from civil society and conservationists. Shrestha had no formal background in wildlife conservation.
“Appointing someone with zero conservation credentials to lead the country’s most important wildlife body is not just an embarrassment, it is a governance failure,” said one Kathmandu-based conservationist on condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. “And now we are talking about handing this same body a project worth 10 billion rupees.”
Safety failures at the Central Zoo have also raised concerns. A red panda (Ailurus fulgens), an endangered species, died at the zoo after surviving two separate theft attempts. A post-incident investigation pointed to failure of surveillance equipment and raised questions about staff oversight.
According to a source with direct knowledge of the discussions who also requested anonymity, NTNC has pinned its hope on Chinese support to finance the new zoo. Nepal has a history of gifting greater one-horned rhinoceroses (Rhinoceros unicornis) to China as diplomatic gifts, a practice officials call “rhino diplomacy.” Whether Chinese financing of a flagship zoo project would come with conditions that shape its design, operations or animal collection remains unknown as officials remain tight-lipped about it.
Banner image: Tigers swim in an artificial pond at the Central Zoo in Kathmandu. Image courtesy of NTNC.
Cite this article
Rajendra Pokherel (2026). Nepal prepares to hand over mega zoo project to conservation body. Mongabay Conservation news. DOI: https://doi.org/10.66709/news-320002Credits
