It was exactly three years ago today when I sat down for lunch at a restaurant in Bhutan’s capital of Thimpu and felt the ground shift under my feet.
I was sitting with several WWF members who’d come to the region to see our conservation work, and I assured them the slight tremor was nothing to worry about. After all, I was born and raised in the nearby nation of Nepal, where the occasional minor earthquake was simply a fact of life. Less than five minutes later, I realized just how wrong I was.
My phone rung and I answered. It was Dechen Dorji, WWF’s country director in Bhutan. He had just heard that there was a big earthquake in Nepal and the damage could be severe. At that point, he had no way of knowing exactly how bad it was, but later we would learn that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake had claimed nearly 9,000 lives, injured nearly 22,000 more, and left hundreds of thousands homeless.
I hung up the phone and started dialing frantically. My parents, my brother, and my sisters all live in Kathmandu — just 80 kilometers from the epicenter of the quake. What’s more, my wife and six-month-old son were currently in Nepal as well, having accompanied me from our home in the United States just a couple weeks earlier.
You see, I’d made this trip in April of 2015 for two reasons. The first reason I’d come was to lead our group of WWF members to Nepal and Bhutan, where they could see firsthand the work that WWF is doing with the governments of both nations, as well as local communities and other conservation groups. Together, we are making great progress in combating the illegal wildlife trade and restoring the populations of vulnerable species like greater one-horned rhinos and Bengal tigers. The second reason I’d come was to bring my son back to my home country for a celebration steeped in centuries of Nepalese tradition. We call it the Pasni, or rice feeding ceremony — a rite of passage for many children that can often involve large, extravagant affairs with family, friends, and colleagues.
So, you can imagine I was in high spirits on April 10th when my wife, my son, and I first landed in Kathmandu. After leaving my wife and son with my parents, I met up with the group of WWF supporters, and together we made our way south to Chitwan National Park (about 20 minutes on a single engine plane to the city of Bharatpur, followed by an hour-long drive).
During our visit to the park, I had an opportunity to participate in an expedition to count rhinos — a population nearly wiped out by human activity, but now considered one of conservation’s great success stories. A few days later, I said goodbye to my wife and son and boarded a plane with the group of WWF members to give them a tour of the sights in nearby Bhutan. I then planned to return to Nepal for my son’s ceremony.
The earthquake struck on April 25th at 11:56AM Nepal Standard Time.
About an hour after learning the news, I managed to get through to my cousin in Nepal. We had about 10 seconds to talk before the phone cut out, just long enough for him to pass along some perfectly cryptic and useless information — something along the lines of, “It’s all gone… everything is gone.” It was like a scene out of a bad horror movie.
My tour group could see the state I was in and were wonderfully supportive, encouraging me to return to my hotel and keep trying to reach my family. I paced the floor of my hotel room, dialing in vain as grim news reports and footage plastered the TV screen. Video of terrified pedestrians scrambling for the safety of intersections as buildings crumbled around them. Temples and other ancient architecture in “Durbar Square” — a popular area in the heart of the Kathmandu that, until that tragic day, evoked only fond memories of good times with friends — now reduced to rubble.
I kept my eyes glued on the TV. In moments like this, I discovered that a chasm of panic can split your mind right down the middle, with one half unable to keep from imagining the worst, while the other half desperately strings together arguments for why everything is sure to turn out okay.
I finally got my brother on the line. My parents, my sister, their families, and my son and wife were all safe together in Kathmandu. I was also able to contact WWF’s Country Director in Nepal, Anil Manandhar, who’d managed to contact most of their staff and confirm they were all safe.
Not everyone was so lucky. And I suppose it’s only human, but I must admit that it wasn’t until after I was able to move past the acute fear for my loved ones and colleagues that I could start to really grasp the enormity of what had happened to my country. Nepal — a relatively small and undeveloped nation — was now forced to cope with loss of life and devastation on a scale that would surely rattle even the great economic powerhouses of the world.
My colleagues at WWF’s office in Bhutan quickly rallied to my aid, equipping me with all manner of relief supplies — from dry food to medicine, sleeping bags, tarps, and more — as I made the return trip to Nepal. It was just me and one other person on the flight, surrounded by rows of empty seats. We sat in stunned silence the whole way.
During our final approach to the airport, I gazed out my window and saw wide open spaces below me filled to bursting with thousands of multi-colored tarps. In the wake of the earthquake, little tent cities had sprung up throughout Kathmandu, teeming with people rendered homeless by the earthquake. Some of those people had homes that were damaged beyond repair; others, like my family, had homes that were still standing, but were too afraid to return until the aftershocks subsided.
And those aftershocks persisted for months — more than 20,000 in all. Of those, 459 registered above a 4.0 on the Richter scale, and one — on the day immediately after the initial quake — registered a nerve-racking 6.8.
I remained for two weeks in Nepal, until my family felt safe enough to return inside their homes. We did end up having the rice feeding ceremony for my son, but we kept it a small affair with just a handful of relatives. With all that people had endured — and were still enduring — throwing a big party hardly felt appropriate.
In the three years since that dark period in Nepal’s history, I have returned to my homeland many times — to visit my family, and to continue WWF’s work to protect the nation’s precious landscapes and wildlife.
It is difficult to overstate how proud I am of my country and its people. They have endured so much — from a decade-long civil war to political instability to natural calamities — but their optimism for a better future has never waned. And as a conservationist, I cannot help but note that a nation nearly brought to its knees by Mother Nature also stands out as a model for protecting her. When our rhino count was finally completed in 2015, we found that Nepal’s rhino population had grown by 21 percent in five years — reason to celebrate indeed. And five separate times over the last seven years, Nepal has succeeded in maintaining 365 consecutive days of zero poaching of rhinos. This year, we are counting tigers, and next year we will count rhinos again. I am highly optimistic that we will find both populations are still on the rebound.
Not everything that is lost can be restored. But when even a few pieces remain, and we have the will to salvage them, there are some things that can be rebuilt — whether they’re an earthquake-ravaged nation or a species driven nearly to extinction. In the words of Peter Scott, renowned conservationist and founder of WWF, “We shan’t save all we should like to, but we shall save a great deal more than if we had never tried.”
