More than ninety-five percent of the visitors entering Dolpa come to Shey Phoksundo National Park. Most pay the entrance fee in Kathmandu, long before reaching the mountains that the money is intended to protect. The fee is 1,000 Nepali rupees for a four-week visit.
Half of the revenue goes into a special fund managed jointly by buffer-zone user committees in Mugu and Dolpa. A council decides how it is spent: thirty percent for conservation, thirty percent for community development, twenty percent for income generation and skills, ten percent for conservation education and ten percent for administration.
Tourism has had very little effect on Dolpa’s environment or culture so far, mainly because visitor numbers remain small.
Shey Phoksundo is Nepal’s largest national park. That makes even a useful amount of income look small when it must support conservation and communities across such an enormous area.
Working with WWF-Nepal, we have invested in campsites, gompa maintenance, bridges, signs and a visitor centre. These are practical improvements, but they are only a beginning.
A tourism plan was prepared with SNV-Nepal and WWF-Nepal, but at the time of our conversation it had not yet been implemented. The main obstacle is not simply money. Local people need more education, confidence and exposure before tourism development can take root.
A plan on paper cannot create local tourism unless people have the knowledge and opportunity to turn it into work.
The park’s entrance fees can support both nature and communities, but Dolpa will benefit fully only when local people have the capacity to guide how tourism develops.