2009

I am a Park Ranger at the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation of the Government of Nepal. I took up the job in 2000 immediately after completing the Intermediate of Science degree in Forestry. I have worked in protected areas from the lowland terai to the Himalayan and Trans-himalayan zones of Nepal. I am fascinated by working with the diversity of creatures in nature.

I received an undergraduate degree from the Institute of Forestry, Nepal in 2006. My thesis work, for the partial fulfilment of the BSc. Degree, was on Conflicts in community forestry. Simultaneously, I conducted a separate project on exploring diversity of herpetofauna in Shey-Phoksundo National Park in the Trans-Himalyan region of Nepal.

My interest in the application of Remote sensing and GIS in wildlife conservation led me to undertake a Post Graduate Diploma in RS&GIS course in India. I undertook the 9-month program in the Center for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (CSSTEAP), Dehradun, India. My project work for partial fulfilment of the PG Diploma course was on Habitat evaluation of Rhinoceros unicornis in Dudhwa National Park, India. After completion of the course, I had a thirst for applying the knowledge and skills I had learned to wildlife conservation in my own country. Fortunately, I was selected as a practitioner fellow by the Alcoa Foundation and Institute of International Education (IIE) to conduct field research and habitat suitability analysis on Rhinocero unicornis in Chitwan National Park, Nepal. I conducted extensive field work and used geospatial tools and machine based ecological niche modelling techniques to carry out the project. This project was conducted in collaboration with and supervision from the World Wide Fund for Nature, Washington DC. I undertook a six-month internship with the Conservation Science Program (CSP) at WWF headquarters, Washington DC to accomplish the data analysis and project report.

Currently I am involved in the Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) conservation program in Chitwan National Park, Nepal. Simultaneously, I am also working on designing research on tiger corridors in the Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) of Nepal. I am a Ph.D. fellow at University of Missouri-Columbia, USA. I am planning to work on answering the questions regarding present status and effectiveness of corridors for tiger conservation in TAL-Nepal for my doctoral research.

Diploma Projects

• Monitoring populations of small mammals in Wytham woods

• Habitat suitability and population viability analysis for greater one-horned rhinoceros Rhinoceros unicornis in Nepal