Three internationally acclaimed experts nominated to NTNC governing board

KATHMANDU: The government has nominated three internationally acclaimed experts to the Governing Board of Trustees of the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC).

Minister for Agriculture, Forests and Environment Gita Chaudhary, who also chairs the NTNC, selected the experts under provisions of the NTNC Act to strengthen the trust’s international profile and accelerate scientific conservation work.

The nominees are Lord Camoys (William Stoner) of the UK House of Lords, conservation scientist Dr Eric Dinerstein, and Australian academic Professor Wendy Wright.

Lord Camoys, the eighth Baron Camoys and chair of the UK Nepal Trust, comes from a family with long historic links to Nepal’s political, diplomatic and conservation spheres and continues to support conservation of Nepal’s biodiversity through British philanthropic efforts.

Dr Eric Dinerstein is known for early research on the feeding habits of one-horned rhinos and tigers in Chitwan National Park during the 1970s and 1980s, and later served as chief scientist at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) for 25 years, with a focus on the Terai Arc Landscape project.

Professor Wendy Wright, a former dean at Federation University in Australia, has collaborated with Nepalese partners for the past decade, involving Australian students in sal (Shorea robusta) forest preservation, buffer-zone management and measures to reduce human-wildlife conflict.

(With inputs from RSS)

The NTNC, which has more than four decades of work in community-based conservation and biodiversity protection, said the newly nominated trustees are expected to contribute to strategic improvements in the trust’s policies and institutional integrity.