National Workshop: Enforcing Nepal’s law to protect orchids and to explore prospects for sustainable harvest

Orchids are one of the most exciting, charismatic, and unique plant groups, the tiger of the plant world. But unlike tigers, we know incredibly little about orchids. For most of the ~500 orchids in Nepal, and over 30,000 orchids around the world, we know little about conservation status but we know from anecdotes that their population is declining at alarming rates. The project collected baseline information to recommend better decisions in management, enforcement, and policy implications, the consultation “Enforcing Nepal’s law to protect orchids and to explore prospects for sustainable harvest” was one of our attempts. We are excited to see all the >65 participants – orchid researchers, conservationists, government officials including CITES scientific and management authorities, enforcement officials, plant traders, representatives from local government authorities of our project sites, and journalists in one platform, with a single goal to conserve these protected species.