While in Nepal, Hoult met with community members of Amaltari, the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park, to learn about their lives and their relationship with the wildlife surrounding them. Ecotourism in the area provides great conservation incentives to the Amaltari community, who maintain a voluntary anti-poaching unit in which members undertake regular patrols of their community forest to keep a check on poaching and illegal wildlife crime.
With the support of WWF Nepal’s maiden Sustainable Communities Initiative, the Amaltari community is focused on the key pillars of sustainability and conservation – self-sufficient livelihoods, alternate energy, health and education – which has delivered scalable impact for the local people and their natural environment.
“This is a positive story for me in terms of the wildlife and just keeping the world as it should be for future generations,” Hoult said. “To track rhinos, to see them in their natural habitat has just been unbelievable and to see everyone care so much about that and people doing such incredible work, it’s remarkable.”
The robust efforts to protect rhinos and support the local Nepali communities and government are paying off: Earlier this year, we celebrated a fourth 365 day period of zero poaching in Nepal. This exceptional success is due to high-level political will, an impressive Nepali army committed to tracking poachers and the active involvement of conservation communities. More than 645 one-horned rhinos now live in Nepal.
As part of his work with WWF, Hoult and his two childhood friends, Carlos Adams and Nick Atkins, will team up for a rigorous rickshaw run adventure in India in early 2017 to raise funds for rhino conservation along with supporting Teenage Cancer Trust.
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