In the grasslands of western Nepal, a small herd of blackbuck antelopes has made a remarkable recovery — from nine animals spotted in 1975 to more than 500 today. Now, conservationists are betting that a new generation of these fleet-footed creatures can do the same in the country's central lowlands.
Nepal's Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation is preparing to relocate 18 blackbucks — six males and 12 females — from Shuklaphanta National Park to Tikauli, a corridor forest area near Chitwan National Park. The translocation, planned for nearly five years by senior ecologist Haribhadra Acharya, aims to establish what conservationists call an "insurance population" for one of Nepal's most imperiled species.
"The main objective of this translocation is to revive the blackbuck population in a different geographic location and habitat area, so if they're impacted by disease or disaster in one area, there will be an alternate secure population," Acharya said.
The blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra) once ranged widely across the Indian subcontinent. While the species isn't globally threatened, Nepal marks the northernmost edge of its range, and here the antelope is classified as critically endangered — already extinct in Bangladesh and Pakistan. The species survived in Nepal only because of decades of dedicated conservation: a Blackbuck Conservation Area established in Bardiya in 2009, combined with successful translocations to Shuklaphanta between 2012 and 2015, helped rebuild populations that had nearly vanished.
Community ecologist Amar Kunwar, who has researched blackbuck conservation for years, calls the population recovery encouraging — but stresses that the story isn't finished. "True success would be when the population is released from the enclosure to the wild and the population survives, breeds and maintains its healthy population in the wild," he said.
At Tikauli, the blackbucks will initially occupy a roughly 20-hectare enclosed area within protected forest. Conservationists have flagged challenges ahead: Chitwan's humid, monsoonal climate differs sharply from the arid conditions blackbucks prefer, and dense grasses here grow up to 4.5 meters high — potentially limiting food and increasing vulnerability to predators like tigers and leopards. Acharya acknowledges these concerns but says the relocation remains the best path forward for the species' long-term resilience.
The new herd will join a network of managed populations across Nepal, all working toward a single goal: a self-sustaining wild blackbuck population that no longer needs fences to survive.