Articles by Abhaya Raj Joshi

SILINGE, Nepal — On a sunny afternoon, 70-year-old Dhanikram Praja squats on top of a hillock overlooking the lush green rows of trees dotting his farm, distinct from his other…

KATHMANDU — In a landmark verdict, Nepal’s Supreme Court has directed the government to take concrete steps to implement the country’s conservation laws and seize illegal private collections of wildlife…

KATHMANDU — When Suman Hamal was growing up in his hometown of Putalibazar in Nepal’s Syangja district, he saw birds of different species and sizes fly around in his neighborhood.…

KATHMANDU — Two rhino calves captured from the wild after being separated from their mothers in recent years have been released back into nature by Nepali officials. The greater one-horned…

KATHMANDU — Until a few months ago, residents of Geruwa, a rural municipality in western Nepal, used to rush to their homes before dusk and shut themselves indoors. That was…

KATHMANDU — As the crowing of a rooster signals the break of dawn in Taplejung in eastern Nepal, two men grab their slingshots and head out to work. They know…

KATHMANDU — Tulshi Laxmi Suwal, a Nepali conservationist, has been named one of the seven winners of this year’s prestigious Whitley Awards, known as the “Green Oscars,” in recognition of…

CHITWAN, Nepal — Wild male elephants in search of females to mate with are homing in on captive domestic elephants, in the process posing a threat to human settlements and…

KATHMANDU — Nepal hasn’t had an environment minister since October last year — a vacuum that could be either good or bad, depending on how one looks at it. The…

KATHMANDU — The spring season in the Northern Hemisphere is a critical time for red pandas, particularly in Nepal. This is the period when these furry, tree-dwelling animals spend a…

KATHMANDU — On an early spring afternoon on the fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, smoke fills the air and the smell of burning grass is overpowering. As flames rage…

KATHMANDU — News of four cheetah cubs being born recently in India has sparked interest in the species in the conservation community in neighboring Nepal, where the big cat’s historical…

KATHMANDU — In 2012, when wildlife biologist Kanchan Thapa visited Chitwan National Park, a stronghold of the Bengal tiger in Nepal, a colleague asked him a question: “How much carbon…

KATHMANDU — The B.P. Koirala Memorial Cancer Hospital in Nepal’s central Bharatpur city, Chitwan District, bustles as patients, most of them from the country’s northern hilly areas, line up for…

CHITWAN — The chirping of birds is interrupted by the rustling of leaves and the sound of breaking twigs. It’s breakfast time at the office of the National Trust for…

KATHMANDU — The South Col in the Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) region faces blasts of unrelenting winds that sweep away almost everything in their path, including snow. Located nearly 8,000 meters (26,000…

KATHMANDU — As dawn breaks over the forest in the Kawasoti area on the edge of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, early risers can catch a glimpse of rare vultures roosting…

KATHMANDU — When researchers last year confirmed the presence of the manul, the “world’s grumpiest cat,” on the world’s highest mountain, they immediately looked at past records of the elusive…

KATHMANDU — A tiger sits quietly surrounded by trees, observing something in the distance. It then roars and darts toward its target: a leopard that jumps down from a tree.…

KATHMANDU — It starts off like the premise for a joke: “Why did the tigers cross the road?” But for researchers and conservationists in Nepal, the spread of roads throughout…

KATHMANDU — When NASA’s Earth Observatory published a post on its website earlier this year describing how Nepal had regenerated its forests between 1992 and 2016, it received a lot…

KATHMANDU — One of the ways people living in the western Himalayas of India, Pakistan and Nepal know that the spring season has started is by listening to male cheer…

KATHMANDU — On Nov. 1 last year, a leopard dragged off an 8-year-old boy as he was playing just steps away from the cowshed where his grandmother was milking the…

KATHMANDU — A popular dish in Nepal, momos are small, bite-sized dumplings filled with spicy minced meat and wrapped in dough. Served piping hot, they are often accompanied by a…

KATHMANDU — If you were a grumpy cat, you’d probably want to avoid company. And if you were the world’s grumpiest, as David Attenborough once described the elusive manul, what…

KATHMANDU — Climate change is likely to expand the habitat of leopards in the Nepal’s high mountain regions, potentially increasing conflict with humans and competition with snow leopards, a new…

KATHMANDU — When residents of Pokhara Valley in western Nepal spot Egyptian vultures nesting on cliffs and trees, they sometimes misidentify them as crows and shoo them away. Sometimes they…

KATHMANDU — When residents of Nandapur village on the western fringes of Nepal’s Chitwan National Park rushed to the scene of a rhino death near the Narayani River on Jan.…

KATHMANDU — On the morning of Jan. 16, the day after Yeti Airlines Flight 691 crashed near Pokhara International Airport in Nepal, killing all 72 people on board, authorities at…

KATHMANDU — When Tulshi Laxmi Suwal was a student in the zoology department at Tribhuvan University in Nepal, she looked through an encyclopedia in search of interesting animals for her…