Kathmandu, Dec. 10 -- Dimar Chaudhary was born and raised in Old Padampur, the village inside what is now Chitwan National Park before it was dsignated a protected area.

His Tharu community, as well as other indigenous groups, traditionally relied on Chitwan's jungles and rivers for generations. Chaudhary himself had grown up collecting medicinal plants and wild vegetables, gathering wood, and grazing cattle in the forest.

Chitwan, along with much of Nepal's Tarai, was plagued by malaria until a US-supported DDT spraying campaign to wipe out the disease in the district in the 1950s. This opened the valley up to trans-migration of farmers from the hills. Before that, Chitwan was inhabited entirely by indigenous people: 90% of the distric...