Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
the norms they embody can protect the habitats of rare species and their populations, enabling
them to persist in the modern world. Cleared through passport control and customs—a simple
table staffed by one lone, robed official—I was about to find out.
We jumped into a waiting jeep and began the winding hour-long drive from the airport in
Paro to the capital, Thimpu. The forested landscape seemed unchanged from my first visit,
sixteen years earlier. Two hundred years ago, the Himalayan region was dotted with small
kingdoms such as Bhutan, Sikkim, and Gorkha, largely inaccessible to the West and covered,
in varying extent, by primeval forest. Nowadays, Himalayan old-growth broad-leaved forests
are uniquely preserved in Bhutan, other such examples elsewhere having been chopped down
over the past few millennia. Consequently, many animal species that reside in these broad-
leaved forests were once widespread along the eastern Himalayan chain but are now greatly
reduced in range.
Map of the country of Bhutan and the surrounding region
Advocates of the Bhutanese way claim that this tiny kingdom of fewer than a million in-
habitants offers its neighbors and the rest of the world an inspiring model for living with
nature and, by extension, its rarities. Roughly the size of Switzerland, Bhutan was the first
nation to establish a permanent fund to finance the long-term protection of its native and
rare flora and fauna. More than sixty countries now boast such conservation trust funds, but
Bhutan's prototype, capitalized in 1992 with a $1 million seed grant from the World Wildlife
Fund, contained a unique feature: the government committed to maintain at least 60 percent
of the country under native forest cover, which in turn provides habitat for many rare species.
Along these protected Himalayan slopes, one can still find such rare mammals as red pan-
das, two species of musk deer, takins, and tigers stalking their prey at timberline, just be-
low where snow leopards roam. The lower reaches of the lush Bhutanese forests are home to
golden langurs and beautiful nuthatches, rare species any naturalist longs to see. The golden
