In 2016, Red Panda Network (RPN) collaborated with the Government of Nepal to complete the nation's first national red panda population and habitat survey. The study expanded 35 districts and confirmed the existence of red pandas in 23 districts and 7 protected areas, as well as provided important information on habitat quality, deforestation and climate change throughout Nepal's red panda range.
We also worked with the Government of Nepal's Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation to develop the world's first protocol for community-based red panda field survey and monitoring.
In 2007, RPN created Project Punde Kund; the world’s first community-based red panda population monitoring program. This program was started with sixteen Forest Guardians; now this national team of over 100 people is Nepal’s largest group of citizen scientists. The Forest Guardian program has resulted in 150 people from disadvantaged, rural communities being trained in wildlife monitoring and conservation techniques.
Is the heart of our community-based initiatives. Forest Guardians monitor and patrol red panda habitat four times a year and report population and habitat information — direct sightings of red panda, indirect signs such as pellets, footprints and foraging marks; as well as natural and anthropogenic threats — to our biologists and field staff. The result is baseline data that allows us to implement science-based conservation programs and evaluate the effectiveness of our programs.
Ongoing monitoring is beneficial in documenting the presence and establishing an index of red panda population in their habitat. The goal of this monitoring program is to gain insight into the status of red panda and how its population is changing over time under the pressure of anthropogenic activities. During monitoring activities, the FGs also remove snares targeted for red panda and other endangered wildlife, and in critical cases, they coordinate with representatives of the local Community Forests and Division Forest Office for effective law enforcement.
Our community-based approach promotes red panda stewardship. As community members are involved in the research and monitoring of their forests they begin to lose the local perception of the forest as a source of extractive income to one of long-term sustainable benefit.
RPN has successfully equipped ten wild red pandas with GPS-satellite collars in the Panchthar-Ilam-Taplejung (PIT) Corridor, a forest corridor between protected areas in Nepal and India. This is Nepal’s first red panda GPS collaring project!
This photo of a marbled cat — the first photographic evidence of this species in Nepal — is the result of an intensive camera trap mammal survey RPN conducted in non-protected forests in Eastern Nepal. Thanks to the support of Rotterdam Zoo, the study has provided thousands of photographs of Himalayan mammals including red panda, Assamese macaque, barking deer, leopard, and Himalayan black bear.
Of transect length traversed for red panda monitoring every year.
Red pandas equipped with GPS-satellite collars for the first time in Nepal.
Community Forests with community-based red panda monitoring.
