Then, in 1950, everything began
to change. A popular revolt by the people of
Nepal brought about the collapse of the Rana
regime, and with it the end of the big hunts.
In the hills the economic situation had been
deteriorating for several decades. The population
grew so fast that people ran out of land on
which to grow crops. In desperation, the land-hungry
farmers began to venture down into the plains,
the new government felt obliged to open Chitwan
for settlement.
An agricultural development program
was started and thousands of hill people poured
into the valley in search of land. A malaria-eradication
scheme, launched by the Government and the United
States Agency for International Development
(USAID) in 1954 proved so successful that the
whole district was declared malaria-free in
1960.
All this was progress of a kind.
But the human influx was so vast and so rapid
that inevitably it had a disastrous effect on
the wildlife habitat. Poaching became rampant,
and little was done to control it. The main
target was rhino, whose horn - renowned for
its alleged medicinal properties - already commanded
enormous prices in the drugstores of the East.
By the end of the 1950s it was
clear that if such a decline continued, the
rhino and other animals would soon face extinction.
Already the swamp deer and the water buffalo
had almost disappeared from Chitwan. Therefore,
in 1959, the Fauna Preservation Society appointed
the distinguished British naturalist E. P. Gee
to make a survey. Gee, who had spent most of
his life in India and was an authority on its
wildlife, recommended the creation of a national
park north of the Rapti river, and this was
duly established in 1961. He also proposed a
wildlife sanctuary to the south of the river
for a trial period of ten years. After he had
surveyed Chitwan again in 1963, this time both
the Fauna Preservation Society and the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature, he recommended
an extension of the national park to include
areas of rhino country in the south.
In 1963 a government committee
investigated the legal status of immigrants
in the Chitwan valley; the Land Settlement Commission
of 1964 resettled 22,000 people, including 4,000
from inside the rhino sanctuary, elsewhere in
the valley. Drastic though it was, the operation
brought little immediate improvement, for the
people who had been evicted poured back into
the area to collect firewood and fodder; the
habitat deteriorated still further, and the
rhino population continued to decline. A survey
carried out in June 1968 estimated that only
a total of between eighty-one and 108 rhinos
were left. The report, published in 1969, predicted
that unless total protection were afforded,
the rhino would disappear by 1980.
In December 1970, His late Majesty
King Mahendra approved the establishment of
the national park south of the Rapti river.
The boundaries were delineated in March and
April of 1971, and preliminary development began
in October that year. Chitwan National Park was officially gazetted in 1973 by His
Majesty King Birendra and became the first national
park in Nepal.
