Nepal, June 5 -- Nepal's Kanchenjunga Conservation Area (KCA) is one of the most unique experiments in community-managed nature protection in the Himalaya.

The landscape below the world's third highest mountain in eastern Nepal supports globally significant biodiversity, including the endangered snow leopard, red panda, musk deer, and black bear.

But it also sustains mountain livelihoods, pastoral systems, tourism economies, and transboundary cultural connections. Yet, the region is experiencing expansion of hydropower and roads, tourism growth that put pressure on an ecologically fragile high mountain system.

This is occurring at a time when Himalayan ecosystems are already under mounting pressure from climate breakdown, shifting pre...