24-30 January 2014 #691

Against the current

SUNIR PANDEY
HOOKED ON: A fisherman searches for the end of his lines in the Narayani River at Chitwan on Sunday.

Famous as one of the last strongholds of the one-horned rhino and the Bengal Tiger in Nepal, Chitwan National Park is now caught in a battle against ambitious ‘projects of national pride’. Initial alignments of the East-West electric railway and the postal road both pass through important wildlife corridors in the protected area and experts now fear that 40 years of exemplary conservation could be wiped out by hasty planning.