Local farmers in various settlements of Chumnubri, the northernmost rural municipality in Gorkha, have been worried with relentless attacks on domesticated animals by the wildlife.

Villagers of Chumnubri area say that they have had a tough time protecting their domesticated animals from the wild animals over the past few years. The wildlife—mainly snow leopards, wolves and brown bears—have been wreaking havoc in the area. They enter the human settlements and pasture lands and kill horses, yaks and chauris.

A horse belonging to Dhorje Lama of Samdo in Chumnubri-1 was found dead in the pasture land near the settlement last year. “The snow leopard killed my beloved horse,” Dhorje said. “I could sell it for around Rs120,000.” According to him, the wildlife have killed more than 40 domesticated animals including horses, yaks and chauris in the Samdo area alone over the past year.

“Farmers are discouraged from rearing domesticated animals nowadays,” Dhorje said. “We cannot make profit by keeping the yaks, chauris and horses anymore. We have to leave them in the grazing lands and the wildlife kills them.” He added that the farmers are hugely affected due to unchecked killing of the domesticated animals over the past few years.

Manaslu Conservation Area, which covers an area of 1,663 square kilometres, is situated in the Chumnubri area. It is the habitat of 33 species of mammals—snow leopard, grey wolf, musk deer, Himalayan tahr, brown bear, blue sheep, Himalayan goral, and Asian black bear, to name a few.

Locals say that the snow leopard population has been rising in the Chumnubri corridor in the past few years. However, the number of the rare animal in the area is yet to be ascertained. Snow leopards (Panthera uncia) are found in mountain regions from 2,500 metres to 5,800 metres above sea level and mainly prey on Himalayan blue sheep and Himalayan thar. They sometimes enter the human settlements and kill domesticated animals.

According to records available at the Manaslu Conservation Area, a total of 39 horses and 52 yaks and chauris were killed by the snow leopards and wolves in the Chumnubri area over the past 15 months.

“The wolves started attacking yaks and chauris some five years ago,” said Chhewang Lama, another local of Samdo. “The pack of wolves generally attacks the animals from the back. The wolves mainly attack yaks and chauris but they generally cannot attack the horses that kick the attacker with their hind legs.” Chhewang added that the wolves killed his two yaks in October.

The local farmers say that the authorities concerned neither take any initiatives to protect the village from the wild animals nor provide suitable compensation to the victims.

“One of my horses was killed by a wild animal a few days ago,” said another farmer, Tsering Lama, of Samdo. “The wildlife attack the domesticated animals whenever they are alone in the kharka (pasture). We have to bear the loss of thousands of rupees if one reared animal gets killed.”

According to the Manaslu Conservation Area, the wolves killed 53 livestock, snow leopards killed 23 livestock and five others were killed by bears in the Chumnubri area in the last fiscal year of 2023-24. “A total of 922,000 relief amounts were distributed to 76 farmers in the last fiscal year,” said Prakash Uprety, conservation officer of Manaslu Conservation Area’s liaison office in Gorkha.

Uprety said that relief amount up to Rs60,000 is provided to the farmer for one ox, cow, buffalo, yak, chauri, horse or mule that gets killed by the wildlife. But farmers say that the compensation amount is too less than the market prices of their domesticated animals.

Samagaun of Chumnubri-1 and Chhekampar of Chumnubri-7 were hit the hardest by wildlife attacks in the fiscal year of 2023-24.

Similarly in the fiscal year of 2022-23, the snow leopards killed 55 livestock and wolves killed 62 domesticated animals in the Chumnubri area.