Nepal’s Supreme Court has ruled that the country’s conservation laws must apply equally to the wealthy — not just to poor and marginalized communities. In a landmark May 30, 2023 C.E. verdict, the court directed the government to identify and seize illegal private collections of wildlife parts held by privileged citizens who had long operated with impunity.
At a glance
- Wildlife crime ruling: Justices Sapna Pradhan Malla and Til Prasad Shrestha ordered the government to issue a public notice requiring private collectors to declare their holdings — and to seize all collections acquired after 1973 C.E., when Nepal’s National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act took effect.
- Illegal wildlife collections: The case was brought by conservationist Kumar Paudel of Greenhood Nepal, who filed a writ petition in 2018 C.E. after documenting tiger pelts and animal heads displayed openly in elite spaces, flouting the law.
- Conservation awareness: Rather than incinerating seized wildlife parts — as Nepal had done before — the court ordered that confiscated items be preserved for educational use, ideally in a museum setting.
Why enforcement has failed the poor
Nepal’s wildlife laws are considered among the strictest in the world. The problem has never been the law itself — it’s who the law actually reaches.
For decades, local and Indigenous communities living near forests have faced harassment and prosecution for minor infractions. Meanwhile, powerful collectors displayed tiger pelts and rhinoceros heads in private homes and public spaces without consequence. Paudel’s petition named this directly: Nepal was running a double standard, and everyone could see it.
“Under Nepal’s laws, wildlife crime also entails transport and collection of contraband, not just poaching,” Paudel said. “But regulatory authorities have been blatantly ignoring this.”
The court’s ruling cuts through that selective enforcement. It establishes that collection and transport of wildlife parts — not just the act of poaching — are crimes under Nepali law, and that no one is above that standard.
Nepal’s conservation record, complicated
Nepal has genuine conservation achievements to its name. Populations of the greater one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis) have rebounded significantly in recent decades. Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris) numbers have more than doubled since 2009 C.E., making Nepal one of the strongest performers in the global tiger recovery effort.
But those wins have come at a cost borne unevenly. Community members — often from Indigenous or low-income backgrounds — have faced prosecution for gathering forest resources their families have used for generations. The park boundaries that protect charismatic wildlife have sometimes cut people off from land and livelihoods without adequate compensation or rights recognition.
The Supreme Court ruling doesn’t resolve that tension on its own. But by demanding that enforcement apply to the powerful as well as the poor, it shifts the moral architecture of Nepali conservation law toward something more equitable.
What the ruling requires
The government must now issue a formal public notice calling on private collectors to register any wildlife holdings. Collections acquired before 1973 C.E. and obtained legally may be eligible for registration. Everything else — acquired after the Conservation Act took effect — is subject to seizure.
Lawyer Padam Bahadur Shrestha, who argued the case, said the court’s phased approach was deliberate. “If the court had ordered the government to seize the collections right away, no one would come forward to register,” he said. The grace period creates an incentive to disclose rather than hide.
Human rights professor Gyan Basnet welcomed the decision as a meaningful step toward equal enforcement, while noting the real test lies ahead. “Only time will tell if the government will take this court order seriously or not,” he said.
That caution is fair. Court orders in wildlife enforcement cases can stall in implementation — especially when they implicate powerful interests. Nepal’s government will need to demonstrate it has the political will to follow through, including building the institutional capacity to catalog, seize, and store collections properly rather than destroy them.
A different model for seized wildlife parts
One of the ruling’s quieter provisions may prove to have lasting impact. Nepal had previously incinerated seized wildlife parts — including a 2017 C.E. burn of 4,000 items including tiger pelts and rhino horns — to signal zero tolerance for poaching. The court now requires that seized items be preserved and used for education, preferably displayed in a museum.
That shift matters. Destroying evidence of wildlife crime removes it from public consciousness. Displaying it — with context — keeps the reality of poaching visible and turns illegal collections into tools for the very awareness campaigns the court has also mandated.
For the Bengal tiger and for Nepal’s forests more broadly, legal accountability at all levels of society is part of what sustained conservation requires. This ruling names that plainly.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Mongabay
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Alzheimer’s risk cut in half by drug in landmark prevention trial
- Uganda brings rhinos back to the wild in Kidepo
- The Good News for Humankind archive on Nepal
About this article
- 🤖 This article is AI-generated, based on a framework created by Peter Schulte.
- 🌍 It aims to be inspirational but clear-eyed, accurate, and evidence-based, and grounded in care for the Earth, peace and belonging for all, and human evolution.
- 💬 Leave your notes and suggestions in the comments below — I will do my best to review and implement where appropriate.
- ✉️ One verified piece of good news, one insight from Antihero Project, every weekday morning. Subscribe free.
