Renegotiating citizenship: stories of young rhinos in Nepal

ABSTRACT

Nepal has linked protection of endangered rhinos to nature-based tourism and poverty reduction. Successful anti-poaching and conservation campaigns have resulted in increases in tourist numbers and rhino populations, which in turn have increased incidences of human and rhino casualties in the areas surrounding Chitwan National Park. Thanks to Nepal’s National Trust for Nature Conservation, orphaned or injured rhinos are transported to facilities where they can safely recover or mature. This paper suggests the use of a posthuman and symbiotic ethics view of multispecies communities to challenge normative ethical assumptions on animal ‘rescue.’ It tells the stories of rhinos raised at the NTNC campus, who became celebrities as well as tourist attractions. These rhinos regularly transgressed both human- and other rhino-imposed boundaries. Their stories offer insight into the struggles of wild individuals who find themselves thrust into increasingly anthropogenic areas, and the ways in which rhinos and humans adapt to shared landscapes.

KEYWORDS:

• Nepal
• rhinoceros
• nature-based tourism
• posthumanism
• anthrozoology
• symbiotic ethics

Acknowledgements

Thank you to staff of the National Trust for Nature Conservation, members of the Chitwan Nature Guide Association, and the many rhinoceros of Nepal. Funding for Open Access publication of this article was provided through the University of Exeter and a Read & Publish Transitional Agreement with Taylor & Francis.

Data statement

Due to ethical concerns for participant safety and anonymity, the research data supporting this publication are not publicly available.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are other less-formal methods of colonization (Brown, 1996).

2 With the assistance of the US Government (Mishra, 2008).

3 Examples are not limited to Nepal, and have been documented in Africa (see Sullivan, 2006) and Chile (see Fletcher, 2009), among others.

4 Staff attribute this to factors such as staff inexperience, state of decomposition, accessibility during monsoon season, lack of funding, etc. (Sadaula, interviews, 2019).

5 The author chooses to avoid inflammatory words such as ‘crop-raiding.’

6 See OnlineKhabar, 2020.

7 Tigers who have consumed humans were captured and relocated to the zoo.

8 See following sections.

9 It is unknown if Shivran was trying to escape from the woman’s attacks and inadvertently trampled her, or if she was attacked.

10 The specific nature of these injuries is not documented.

11 In fact, villagers face between 10–15 annual fatalities near Chitwan National Park (Szydlowski, 2021) and average over 40 annual injuries and fatalities around the country (Lamichhane et al., 2018).