GAURISHANKAR CONSERVATION AREA RECOGNISED

Himalayan News Service

KATHMANDU: Gaurishankar Area Conservation (GCA) has become the third Conservation Area as per the Nepal Gazette dated January 11, 2010.

Earlier, only Annapurna Conservation Area (ACA) and Mansalu Conservation Area (MCA) were recognised as conservation areas.

“Now, Gaurishankar will be conserved by NTNC for 20 years. We need to develop GCA,” said Juddha Bahadur Gurung, member secretary, NTNC. “We are trying to develop GCA as climate-friendly tourist destination,” he said.

According to the Nepal Gazette dated July 19, 2010, Gaurishankar Area Conservation responsibility has been entrusted to the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) for 20 years. ACA and MCA are already under the responsibility of NTNC.

GCA covers an area of 2,179 square kilometers and encompasses 22 Village Development Committees of three districts. Along with outstanding bio-diversity, GCA has been recognised as new tourist destination for the Nepal Tourism Year (NTY) 2011. “GCA is a wildlife corridor that connects to Langtang and Sagarmatha,” said Dr Siddhartha Bajra Bajracharya, executive officer, NTNC.

“It is a new tourism product. As the existing tourism destinations can not be sufficient for the tourism year, we need to promote GCA with special infrastructure development programme there,” Bajracharya said. According to Bajracharya, Gaurishankar can be developed as carbon neutral tourism destination as its main attraction.

“Compared to ACA and MCA, GCA has easy accessibility through roads as one can easily drive to the destination if necessary,” he said. Gaurishankar however, connects Langtang and Sagarmatha. It is relatively less visited and there is no exact data about the tourists arriving at GCA. Annually, more than 60,000 tourists visit ACA, while above 30,000 visit Sagarmatha and more than 10,000 visit the Langtang area.

Bajracharya said different tourist products can be promoted at Gaurishankar. He said, “Along with high-altitude, the region has a number of variations which need to be explored.”

“On an average, 1,000 tourists visits the area annually. However, the number can be increased with proper infrastructure and publicity,” he said. GCA can be developed for Trekking Tourism, Wildlife Tourism, Nature-based Tourism, Adventure Tourism, and Mountaineering.

www.thehimalayantimes.com 19 Aug 010