After a decade of talk and minimal progress, Nepal is preparing to entrust its most ambitious wildlife conservation project to date to the National Trust for Nature Conservation—a bold gamble that has sparked both enthusiasm and serious doubts about the organization's capacity to deliver. The proposed zoo in Suryabinayak, a municipality on the outskirts of Kathmandu, would sprawl across 259 hectares of community-managed forest, making it roughly 40 times larger than Nepal's existing Central Zoo and grand enough to fit 2,072 Olympic-sized swimming pools within its boundaries.
Discussions about the project began in 2015, and then-Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli attended a groundbreaking ceremony in June 2016. Since then, the initiative has stalled almost entirely. The government budgeted only around 15 million Nepali rupees—roughly $98,700—annually toward the project, covering little more than staff salaries, while the full construction and operation is estimated to cost 10 billion Nepali rupees, or $65.8 million. The result has been a decade of limited preparatory work: some fencing, planning documents, and not much else.
A committee convened by Nepal's Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment recently recommended handing the project to the NTNC, a semi-governmental body that has run Nepal's Central Zoo since 1995. "The best option was creating a flexible policy environment for the trust to handle operations," said Maheshwar Dhakal, the joint secretary who led the committee's analysis. A formal decision is expected soon, though no concrete timeline has been announced.
The case for the NTNC rests on three decades of institutional experience and proven international connections. The organization currently manages the Central Zoo in Kathmandu, which was founded in 1932 and now houses 942 individual animals representing 127 species. Gobinda Prasad Pokharel, the trust's conservation and information officer, emphasized the organization's capacity to secure international partnerships and animal transfers that the government alone cannot negotiate. "We have long experience, tools and technicians that are second to none in Nepal," he said. The NTNC recently signed a new 30-year management agreement to continue operating the Central Zoo, signaling government confidence in its stewardship.
Yet concerns linger. Ram Prasad Chaudhary, an emeritus professor at Tribhuvan University and former NTNC board member, acknowledged the organization's expertise while warning that a $65.8 million project represents an enormous financial burden. Financial struggles have already plagued the existing Central Zoo, and a high-profile leadership appointment stirred political controversy. The recent death of an endangered red panda at the facility has also raised questions about the organization's operational standards.
The handover remains conditional on political will and deeper scrutiny of NTNC's capacity to raise funds at scale. If successful, the new zoo could become a flagship conservation facility for South Asia, equipped to house elephants and rare species beyond the government's reach. If it stumbles, it risks becoming yet another abandoned infrastructure project in Nepal's conservation landscape. The decision ahead will reveal whether the NTNC is ready to think bigger than its current 6-hectare footprint.