Letter to Wildlife Official

Dear Sir or Madam,
My name is Mark Hargrove. I am a senior at High Tech High International in San Diego, California. I am a chartered member of the Global Youth Council for Wildlife Conservation (youthforwildlife.org) and am working to sponsor wildlife rehabilitation in Kathmandu, Nepal.
With the governmental transformation in 2006 (when Nepal dethroned its monarch, King Gyanendra, and ultimately became a democratic federal republic) came a spike in the poaching of endangered species. During the nine month period following the government shift, the federal Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation verified that more than twenty endangered rhinos were poached for their horns. Other conservation groups believe the unofficial number to be much higher. They fear that nearly all of the eighty rhinos in the Babai Valley in western Nepal have been slain. During this time, government agencies also seized about twenty tiger skins, ten leopard skins and over 100 pounds of tiger bones in various places including the capital, Kathmandu.
The revolution in Nepal has liberated the country from rebel violence, but has enabled the sharp rise in animal poaching. During the ten year conflict between Maoist insurgents and the standing constitutional monarchy, patrols on each side secured conservation areas and national parks (. Now that the government and the rebels have negotiated peace, no one patrols these areas, leaving them easily accessible to poachers. To make matters worse, the new cabinet recently released around twenty poachers in celebration of restored democracy in Nepal. And with no patrols in national parks, the released poachers have strong incentive to use the parks as poaching grounds. These grounds comprise twenty percent of the country’s land area which is divided into sixteen protected zones. Unfortunately, the revolution drew military guard away from these areas. While the new government scrambled to reestablish this protection, poachers operated unchecked. ‘“Time and time again, whenever there has been political uncertainty in the country, wildlife conservation has been one of the biggest casualties,’ said World Wildlife Fund Nepal chief, Anil Manandhar. ‘This time, it has become even clearer and what we need now is to focus on wildlife traders.’” Wildlife Conservation Nepal, a non-governmental organization, conducted undercover operations that led to the arrests of fifteen poachers in 2006. Still, poaching remains highly unregulated in Nepal.
I am writing to you in hope that you will push enforcement of anti-poaching laws. I also hope that the nearly two dozen poachers that the freshly established cabinet freed in celebration of the new government will serve out the rest of their sentences.

Respectfully,

Mark Hargrove