|| History of Establishment | Indroduction || Objectives | Programmes | Research and monitoring of Natural condition |
||Blackbuck-The most endangered wildlife||  Photo gallary||

RESEARCH AND NATURE MONITORING

APEC Involvement on monitoring:

Association for protection of Environment and culture (APEC) is a non profit, membership base organisation, handled by the elected seven executive committee and general members according to the constitution and rules regulation of non governmental organisation registration act 2034 BS [1977] Article 4 of Nepal.

In each and every activities handled by the executive committee should be approve by the majority of the general member in general assembly meeting at list once in a year The time period of executive committee is 4 year and in 1998 new executive committee was elected under the leadership of Mr Medini Bhandari, who is also one of the founder of APEC.

APEC have been concentrating in various activities on Environment conservation mentioned, in introduction including monitoring .The environmental condition is eastern Nepal. Its monitoring natural and cultural Environmental change .The data collection procedure mainly based on field visit, field survey, interview [both Rapid rural appraisal and Participatory rural appraisal] and secondary information acquired through different sources i.e. Newsletter; scientific journal; NGOs information and from research papers dissertation by the Tribhuwan University's students of Nepal. The monitoring focus drives according to the mandate given by the constitution as well as the Assembly meeting mandate.

The information collection is continuous process of the organisation and to some extent it is trying to keep the record. However, due to the lack of essential funding and expert recording is based on based on conventional method. It has clear vision and objectives of monitoring and collection of information. APEC is also using acquired information to make aware related people concerned both government and non-government agencies.

APEC is a volunteer members based organisation from different field and location of country. So automatically, information goes to the local people through its other programs such as awareness campaign, school education and mobile exhibition.

Procedurally, information goes to the related people through publication reporting, or published is local and national newsletters. This process is continuous, though, if situation became on favorable information should go in annul report of organisation, by law each year organisation's report should submit to Social Welfare Council, Nepal and District administrative office to renew the registration and affiliation. Within organisation, APEC is trying to adopt the information.

Monitoring Objectives:

The second objective of organisation's to make people aware in the field of nature and culture, for this major component is regular information collection related field. The reason of regular information collection is to detect the change of the natural ecosystem as well as the changing behavior of people towards nature. Most of the people in local villages are still illiterate and ignorance about the importance of Nature and natural environment. Therefore, to conserve nature, people need to know the importance of nature. To mitigate this objective APEC has been handling regularly awareness program as well.

So APEC has established its main objectives for awareness. The main issues are bio-diversity loss; forest degradation, wildlife habitat loss; unsustainable use of Natural resources mainly changing forest area to agricultural land, unpractical us practices, dependency on agricultural activities, illiteracy and ignorance. 42% of people are under the poverty line and population growth rate high. Therefore, The focus of organisation is towards the betterment of mentioned issues.

Nepal is poor country economically it has no proper- infra- structure for the basic needs of people. Due to these limitations it is not easy to diverse people from their traditional occupation i.e. agriculture, grazing, illegal timber business etc. In fact, As a NGO, APEC has no alternate resources, which directly influence people in their occupation. To illuminate those issues, large-scale project should implement. However, these constraints do not disturb the activities of APEC.

Detailed survey and research is essential in each of the issues mentioned above those information's should go to government as well as local authorities. INGOs, NGOs and donor agencies.

The objective of monitoring program is to quantity the degree of Naturalness Change and to collect the information for identify the problems, in the field of:
- Forest
- Wildlife
- Bird
- Soil
- And others

a) Forestry monitoring
I) The variables to be monitored are: Encroachment by the people for agriculture use illegally such as:
- Cropping
- Settlement
- Grass and fuel wood
- Grazing in the forest area
- Poaching and export
- Herbal plant poaching
- Firing in the forest
II) a. Encroachment by the Government:
- Squatters and landless settlement in the forest area
- Forest logging and timber business

b. Positive work by the Government which APEC monitors:
- Plantation
- Forest planning
- Community involvement for forest conservation
- Other programs which help for conservation of forest

III) Miscellaneous:
- Forest plant species composition
- Land cover and land use change
- Natural vegetation loss
- Natural regeneration and anthropogenic influence
- Succession and mutation

b) Wildlife:
- Distribution
- Poaching / killing
- Habitat degradation

APEC is giving focus for Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, only one RAMSAR site wetland in Nepal. In Tappu main problem is human encroachment, where additionally APEC monitors the domestic animal entry in the protected area and disturbance to wild animal mainly wild water buffaloes. There are only 100 pure buffaloes wild in Koshi Tappu wildlife reserve. Cross breeding with domestic buffaloes and poaching for meat are prime problems. Some time wild water buffaloes come out to the agricultural area with domestic buffaloes group.
 

c) Birds:
- Wetland monitoring
- Poaching
- Wetland species loss
- Bird watching and species census
- Birds population distribution and its loss or change

d) Soil:
- Natural landslide
- Landslide due to the human disturbance
- Soil erosion in rainy season
- Land cover change
 

e) Water:
APEC has limited program for monitoring of water resources. Especially, APEC has been involving recording of the course change of Sapta Koshi River in Nepal. Koshi is the Biggest river in Nepal and famous for its course change in Tarai (plain area).

f) Others:
APEC has been involving in the monitoring activities in the cultural aspects mainly related to Nature. According to Hindu Mythology there are 330000000 Gods and Goddesses and each of them have relation with wild flora and fauna.

Likewise there is a long list of god and goddess. Apart from these the sources of water land have different identity as god. Indigenous / ethnic community have also their many gods for conservation of nature.

We monitor the behavior change of local's and after having appropriate information. We are trying to remind the tradition and encourage involving for nature conservation.

The audience of acquired information's are local villagers themselves as well as all other related people and agencies.

The information's are based on field survey, interviews, RRA and PRA tools.

These information's help to explore the reality of Natural loss and its effect to the local residence as well. The major sufferers by the loss of near by forest are local residences. So it helps APEC mission directly to make people aware in the field and it give the overview of environmental change in general.
 

The APEC monitoring activities provides the following activities.

Political, People became aware about their surroundings by which they could influence to the political leader for the plan and project. Leaders became aware by the information and can put the information and can put the information in their plan of development of their constituency.

Local leader could be benefited having the knowledge of real situation. It can be helpful in the following aspects:

1). Project plan

2). Management

3). Implementation

4). Monitoring

5). Control and

6). Follow up,

It could help for distribution of resources and locked the area for priority sector. It could also help for the distinguish the suitable the suitability classification of different land use practices.

Resource, The information could be use for the sustainable use of natural resources could be identified.

Abundance of certain type of species or scarcity of certain species be identified.

Institutional:
- Capacity building
- Experience in the field

Legal Aspects: In Nepal there is no appropriate low about the monitoring the Natural resources. Different agencies are working in this field in this field in field in different areas. There is Coordination between them. However by law there no any problem for monitoring activities.

Constraints: APEC have limited funding. Manpower to conduct regular monitoring and record keeping. APEC has no ability of Remote Sensing data as well as data process such as GIS package, powerful hardware, software and personal computer system. APEC have trained main power but due to the lack of equipment's it is being difficult to deal with RS / GIs tools.

Normally national policy of the government is no negative for monitoring activities.

The information or acquire data should be appropriate, accurate and reliable. There is legal standard and obligation if any information published wrongly. The information should be transparent, source should be mentioned currently and data collection time should be mentioned. Other constraints such as any events can influence the previous condition. So, it is essential to note the climatic condition, rainfall or dryness of data collection time.

The major environmental monitoring variables are already mentioned in objectives statement. Additionally the natural situation and anthropogenic disturbances to the natural ecosystem are also monitored in monitoring program.

The changes to be detected are forest situation, wildlife distribution, birds abundance and distribution and soil condition and river course change. Those information's / data are based on visual estimation, expert knowledge and interviews. The comparison between last year situation with current situation is the base to show the change.

APEC is based on eastern part of Nepal covering 16 districts with its various branches and units.

Districts and Monitoring variables
Mechi Zone:-
Taplejung Forest, soil erosion and land slide
Panchdar Forest, soil erosion, landslide and birds
Ilam Forest (partly)
Jhapa Forest, wildlife, birds and river course

Koshi Zone:
Sankhuwasabha Forest (partly)
Bhojpur Forest (partly)
Terathum Forest and wildlife
Dhankuta Forest, wildlife, birds, soil erosion, landslide
Sunsari Forest, wildlife, birds, wetlands, soil, water course change
Morang Forest, wildlife, birds.

Sagarmatha Zone
Solukhumbu (Where is Mt. Everest) - Landslide, Forest
OkhalDunga Party forest
Khotang Party forest
Udayapur Wildlife, birds, forest, water & soil erosion
Siraha Party forest & soil erosion
Saptari Wildlife, Forest, Soil erosion, birds, water course change. Mainly in Sunsari, Morang, Saptari, Udhayapur & Dhankuta district APEC has been conducting regular monitoring in each 6 months period. Koshi, Tappu Wildlife reserve belongs to the in Sunsari, Saptari and Udhayapur districts. So in these three district APEC monitors each Aspects at least 3 time in a year to evaluate the wildlife habitat in the Reserve. To see the seasonal impact on wildlife and birds it is equally see the adjoining land use practice. So APEC also records the agricultural practice of mentioned three districts.

The tool for monitoring depends on the situation and funding resources. General survey, Random sampling, random, Cluster sampling methods and RRA|PRA tools also applying for date collection.

Different secondary sources are also being use to cover larger area. Topographic, climatic, soil and Vegetation Hard copy map made by the survey department, soil & forest department are being use to locate the affected area. APEC is field base organisation so mainly or informations are based on fieldwork.

To give the information to relate people organize talk programs, seminars visual exhibitions, Local and National newsletters are also the sources of reporting. APEC also distribute the information to local and national govt.

There is some chance of missing information's due to the unavoidable human biosness. To reduce this problem various methods should be applied in the same field such as baseline survey, Random sampling, RRA|PRA and PS|GIs But APEC in only relying on only are methods for one place.

There may be same other agencies working on another field for another purpose but due to the lack of information flow, collaborative action in not in practice. However, APEC has been requesting to work together with department of forest and department of wildlife, HMG, Nepal. IUCN-Nepal and WWF-Nepal have made some efforts to eliminate the gap between different agencies. APEC is closely working with both organisation. Therefore, there is a chance to solve the problem in future.

In many cases APEC has no right in might so, there is same change to get wrong information from stockholders themselves.

The information, collecting and publishing by APEC has important to local shareholders as well as authoring. APEC conduct developmental activities according to own data so collected information's are valuable.

APEC analyses the collected information's and shows the result. Self evaluation, cross checking and comparison with other source of information permits for the evaluation of monitoring process of APEC.

APEC has been working in monitoring and analyzing the information since 1988. It has developed its own procedure and variable for the monitoring as mentioned above in explanation of objectives.

In connection to organising resources it has barriers. So in many case APEC in dependent with its volunteers working in different units and locations. APEC collects primary information by its own volunteers However, in some cases it is using secondary data also.

APEC provides training for its also request international training organisation for training opportunity. Methodologically, for field base information APEC is self-sufficient but to use new tools and equipment's it has limitations.

APEC compares information on yearly basis and detect the change, using statistical test.

Both quantitative and qualitative data record is in practice. Therefore both parametric and non-parametric statistical test is being applied. However, Constraints are lack of new statistical software package and PCs.

For further information and help please visit or contact one of the following address: http://www.geocities.com/Enchanted Forest/Fountain/1231/report.html or

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/vines/9998

Association for Protection of Environment and Culture, (APEC)
Head Office,
40, Dharma Bhakta Marga, Hatkhola Road,
Biratnagar-10, Morang, Nepal.
Phone 977-21-30803, Fax 977-21-24099.
E-mail: [email protected]
APEC Netherlands
Laan van Overvest 28
Delft, the Netherlands,
Ph. 0031-06-54243935 (Mobile),
or 0031-15-3147217 (Office)
E-mail:

Mr. Rishi Shah
Adviser/ Academician
APEC
Jawalkhel, Lalitpur, Nepal
pH 977 1 530313, 977 1 53941, 977 1 538273
Fax: 977 1 538473
E-mail: [email protected]

Mr. John Egholm Jensen
APEC Denmark, Roskilde University,
Hus 21.1., Post box 260, 4000 Roskilde, DENMARK

|| History of Establishment | Indroduction || Objectives | Programmes | Research and monitoring of Natural condition |
||Blackbuck-The most endangered wildlife||  Photo gallary||

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Central Office: 40, Dharma Bhakta Marga, Hatkhola Road Biratnagar-10, Morang, Nepal.  Phone 977-21-30803, Fax 977-21-24099. Postal Address: GPO Box 12822, Kathmandu, Nepal For further information email to APEC. Go to >Home  >Back <

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