KATHMANDU — Nepali officials are preparing to hand over the government’s ambitious new zoo to the country’s leading wildlife conservation body. Whether that body is up to the task is up for debate. Discussions around the proposed zoo in Suryabinayak municipality in central Nepal, which would span 259 hectares (640 acres) of community-managed forests on the outskirts of Kathmandu, began in 2015. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in June 2016, attended by the then prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli. After that, only limited preparatory work such as fencing and planning documents moved forward. The reason: lack of funds. Constructing and bringing it into operation is estimated to cost around 10 billion Nepali rupees($65.8 million). But the government has been allocating only around 15 million Nepali rupees ($98,700) a year towards it, mainly to pay for the staff’s salaries. A one-horned rhinoceros at the central zoo in Kathmandu. Image courtesy of NTNC. After the formation of the new government in March 2026, the then Ministry of Forests and Environment (now Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment) assigned a committee to look for ways to start work on the new zoo. The committee recently recommended that the project be handed over to the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), a semi-governmental body that already oversees the management of Nepal’s Central Zoo, in Kathmandu. “The committee analyzed what would happen if the government ran it versus handing it to NTNC,” said Maheshwar Dhakal, joint secretary at Ministry of Agriculture, Forest and Environment who…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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