Thousands of camera traps have helped conservationists track Nepal’s wild tiger population, which has nearly doubled in recent years as the big cats claw their way back from the verge of extinction.

After a nine-year push to protect tigers, an exhaustive census across 2,700km of Nepal’s lowlands completed earlier this year revealed the population has grown from 121 in 2009 to an estimated 235 adult cats today.

On the frontline of the painstaking survey were trained locals like Chaudhary in western Nepal’s Bardia National Park where tiger numbers have grown nearly fivefold.

The 25-year-old helped track and record wild tiger movements through the park by scanning images taken by cameras hidden in the jungle’s undergrowth.

“It was very exciting when we checked the [memory] cards and found photos of tigers,” Chaudhary told AFP.

“It felt like we are part of something big.”

Nepal’s southern lowlands, home to five national parks, were mapped into grids, each fitted with a pair of camera traps to record any tiger activity.

More than 3,200 of these special camera traps were installed, some by field workers on elephants to navigate the dense jungle.

“It was not an easy process and risky as well,” said Man Bahadur Khadka, head of Nepal’s department of wildlife and national parks.

These cameras were equipped with sensors that triggered a click whenever any movement or a change in temperature was detected.

Soon the photos started to trickle in: lone tigers walking past, mothers with their playful cubs and the occasional tiger feasting on a fresh kill. And Chaudhary’s favourite: a big cat that seemed to enjoy preening in front of the lens.

The census began in November 2017 and by the following March, more than 4,000 images of tigers had been collected.

“We then began analysing the photos,” Khadka said. “Just like our fingerprints, tigers have unique stripes. No two tigers are alike.”

‘Our wealth’

Conservationists say that behind Nepal’s success was a strategy to turn tiger-fearing villagers – who could earn thousands of dollars for poaching a big cat – into the animal’s protectors.

A century ago, Nepal’s lush jungles were a playground for the country’s rulers and visiting British dignitaries who came to hunt the Royal Bengal tiger.

In 1900, more than 100,000 tigers were estimated to roam the planet. But that fell to a record low of 3,200 globally in 2010.

Nepal’s tiger numbers hit rock bottom following the decade-long civil war, which ended in 2006, when poachers ran amok across the southern plains.

In 2009, the government changed tack, enlisting community groups to protect the animals. Hundreds of young volunteers were recruited to guard Nepal’s national parks, patrolling against poachers, raising awareness and protecting the natural habitat.

“Tigers are our wealth, we have to protect them,” said Sanju Pariyar, 22, who was just a teen when she joined an anti-poaching group.

“People understand that if our tiger and rhino numbers grow, tourists will come and bring opportunities. It is good for us.”

Armed with a stick, Pariyar regularly goes out on patrol to search for traps laid by poachers.

The locals have also become informants, alerting park officials if they see anything, or anyone, suspicious.

Nepal has tough punishments for poachers – up to 15 years in jail and a heavy fine – and it has recently started a genetic database of its tigers to aid investigations.

In March, police arrested a poacher who had been on the run for five years after being caught with five tiger pelts and 114kg of bones.

The contraband was believed to have been destined for China, a top market for wildlife smugglers, where rare animal parts are used in traditional medicine.

In 2010, Nepal and 12 other countries with tiger populations signed an agreement to double their big cat numbers by 2022. The Himalayan nation is set to be the first to achieve this target.

“If a country like Nepal – small, least developed, with lots of challenges – can do it, the others can do it,” said Nepal’s WWF representative, Ghana Gurung.

But conservationists are aware that rising tiger numbers are also good news for poachers and the lucrative black market they supply with endangered animal parts.

Tiger poaching is difficult to track because unlike with rhinos, nothing of the cat is left behind after it is killed.

“It is now more important than ever to stay vigilant,” said national park warden Ashok Bhandari.

    Retrieving the black box will be key to unlocking why the Boeing 737-MAX, one of the world’s newest and most advanced commercial passenger jets, nosedived into the Java sea so soon after leaving Jakarta.

Authorities picked up the box’s signals some 30-40 meters (100-130 feet) below the surface of the water off Indonesia’s north coast, where the plane crashed Monday.

“We have not found the black box’s location, but it’s in the area, within a three-kilometre radius,” Soerjanto Tjahjono, head of Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee, told Kompas TV.

“Usually the black box location is near the main wreckage.”

The box contains flight data that shows the speed, altitude and direction of the plane, while the cockpit voice recorder keeps track of conversations and other sounds in the cockpit.

Dozens of divers were taking part in the 1,000-strong personnel recovery effort along with helicopters and ships, but authorities have all but ruled out finding any survivors.

The development comes as Boeing officials were due to meet with Lion Air on Wednesday, after Indonesia ordered an inspection of the US plane maker’s 737-MAX jets.

Indonesia’s transport minister Budi Karya Sumadi took the unusual step of ordering the temporary removal of Lion Air’s technical director and several other staff who cleared the flight, citing government authority over the aviation sector.

He later stressed that the measure meant to free up the technical director to help with the crash probe.

 – ‘Worst in the world’ –

Aviation experts say it is too early to determine what caused the accident.

But Lion’s admission that the plane had an unspecified technical issue on a previous flight — as well as the plane’s abrupt nosedive just 12 minutes after takeoff — have raised questions about whether it had any faults specific to the newly released model, including a speed-and-altitude system malfunction.

“The bigger picture here is that you’ve got a lot of American carriers flying the same aircraft,” Stephen Wright, aviation expert at the University of Leeds, told AFP.

“Is there (a problem) that could affect other aircraft?”

The crash has also resurrected concerns about Indonesia’s patchy air safety record which led to a now-lifted ban on its planes entering US and European airspace.

Lion’s co-founder Rusdi Kirana, now Indonesia’s ambassador to Malaysia, said in a 2015 interview that “my airline is the worst in the world, but you don’t have a choice”.

Founded in 1999, the budget carrier capitalised on a boom in Indonesia’s aviation industry, but has been plagued by safety woes and complaints over unreliable scheduling and poor service.

Lion was involved in a number of incidents including a fatal 2004 crash and a collision between two Lion Air planes at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta airport.

Indonesia’s biggest low-cost carrier announced this year it was buying 50 Boeing-737 MAX 10 jets for $6.24 billion.

Boeing suspended release of the fuel-efficient 737 MAX just days before its first commercial delivery last year due to an engine issue.

But the single-aisle jet was subsequently cleared for commercial delivery and has had thousands of orders from more than 100 customers worldwide.

– ‘Dad, I love you every day’ –

Distraught relatives sifted through clothes, wallets and other retrieved personal effects on a Jakarta dockside, as authorities sent body parts to hospital for DNA testing

“He was the best husband in the world,” 33-year-old Ningsi Ayorbaba said of her partner Ferdinand Paul Ayorbaba, who was on the flight.

“We had planned to celebrate our 15th anniversary in April…Today, I’m bringing in DNA samples.”

Among the items plucked from the water was a smartphone case with the image of a couple walking hand-in-hand over a bridge.

The story went viral online and the pair were later identified as Ine Yunita Savitri and her husband Wahjoe Noegrohantoro, who was on the downed jet. Savitri was not on the plane.

On Tuesday, their daughter Samantha posted the image to her Instagram account with the words: “Dad, I love you every day”.

Daniel Albert Rojas was booked into Dona Ana County Detention Center where he is being held without bond, as reported by Las Cruces Sun-News on Friday, Oct 26.

He was charged with felony counts of aggravated assault against a household member and false imprisonment. He was also nabbed for a misdemeanour count of battery against a household member.

The incident happened on Thursday, Oct. 25. His girlfriend (identity withheld) of six years was taken by surprise when the suspect barged into their room and forcefully inspected her body.

Rojas admitted he did such thing, the report said. Apparently, he found that the actress in a pornographic video he was watching had distinctive marks on her body which resembles that of his girlfriends’.

Investigators established the suspect had mistakenly believed the porn actress was his girlfriend. His dismay over what he supposedly discovered pushed him to personally confirm his hunch.

When his girlfriend began packing her clothes to leave, Rojas reportedly grabbed a knife and threatened her with it. He was also suspected of briefly preventing her from leaving their home.

Once the woman found an opportunity to escape Rojas, she immediately fled and called the police.

“Cambodia and China are good friends and good neighbours. Jiangsu is a Chinese province [and] we are pushing for more cooperation with Cambodia,” Huang Xiqiang, the deputy director-general of the Foreign Affairs Office of Jiangsu Provincial People’s Government, told visiting Cambodian journalists to the southern Chinese province on Monday.

“President Xi Jinping regards [Preah Sihanouk province] as a role model of cooperation between China and Cambodia.”

Preah Sihanouk has seen huge growth in the manufacturing, tourism and gambling sectors, and a local real estate agency director said further investment in manufacturing would “help transform Cambodia from an agricultural to an industrialised nation”.

Bilateral trade between Jiangsu and Preah Sihanouk, which have just signed an agreement to become sister provinces, was valued at $1.2 billion last year. This is equal to one-fifth of China’s total trade with Cambodia and is expected to increase 30 per cent this year, Huang said.

Jiangsu province accounts for 10.38 per cent of China’s total economy, with its GDP hitting $1.2 trillion last year.

Preah Sihanouk province has increasingly become a hotbed for Chinese investment in the Kingdom, and its geography has proven strategic in pushing Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia.

“We encourage enterprises to invest in Cambodian production, from resources and labour to technology,” Huang said. “In the past, [investment] was more focused on garment manufacturing. In the future, we will cooperate in technology. This is a win-win strategy.”

Huang said the Preah Sihanouk Special Economic Zone has 125 enterprises and has created 21,000 jobs with $500 million in investments. He said the zone plans to create between 80,000 to 100,000 jobs.

Emerging Markets Consulting senior consultant Ngeth Chou said he welcomed an increase in investment in Preah Sihanouk province’s manufacturing, which he said would largely benefit the Kingdom.

He added that investment in the sector would help Cambodians acquire new skills and stable incomes, as opposed to growth in the gaming industry, which has been blamed for causing social problems.

“Casinos do not offer as many economic benefits as the manufacturing sector, because investment in factories could help Cambodia benefit greatly, from the use of local raw materials to [the creation of] a skilled workforce, as well as reduce migration.”

However, Chou suggested that for sustainable development, the Cambodian government must also create mechanisms to control the nature of investment, such as insisting on the use of local human resources and raw materials.

Key Real Estate director Sorn Seap said that while the influx of Chinese has raised property prices in Preah Sihanouk, more investment in manufacturing would help create new jobs and technology for the future development of Cambodia.

“It will help transform Cambodia from an agricultural to an industrialised nation, and promote the Kingdom’s image on the international stage,” Seap said.

Preah Sihanouk provincial governor Yun Min, who visited Jiangsu province last week to strengthen city-level relations, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Jiangsu provincial statistics showed that 200,000 of its residents visited Cambodia in 2016.

The increase of tourists led to direct flights between Jiangsu and Cambodia’s international airports, Huang said.

It worked to a large extent. Now, the Kingdom prides itself with a literacy rate of over 77 per cent – a testimony of its achievement.

Decades-long sweeping reforms – improvements in school infrastructure, increase in educational budget, better staffing and resources, and buttressed with policies like The Education Strategic Plan 2014-2018 – have been central for the proliferation of education.

Today, over thousands of students, from far-flung rural areas to urban localities, avail of free education every year.

While, private institutions compete with public schools and universities for enrollment.

But limitations continue to blight the sector. A myriad of challenges still stifles in providing inclusive and quality education for the growing student population, which educationists need to address quickly, in order to drive the country from an agrarian society to an industrial economy.

Cambodia has a towering ambition. It wants to transcend from a lower-middle income nation to an upper-middle income country by 2030, and to be a developed economy by 2050.

A Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport’s report. cited: “The immediate and future economic growth and competitiveness of the nation to realise the ambitions depends on our people having the right knowledge and relevant skills, reflecting our cultural and ethical heritage.”

But ground realities depict a different narrative. Rural education is still lagging due to a lack of resources such as trained teachers, modern infrastructure, language of instruction and shortage of private investments – lament some educationists.

The government estimated that only 42 per cent of students reached Grade 9  between 2015 and 2016 school years.

Another pressing issue is the skill gap between what institutions, both public and private produce, and what the market needs.

In other words, most students are not market-ready after graduation. The government needs to bridge this gap and educational institutions need to produce graduates to match market demands.

“Skilled human resources even for low-to-medium skill-intensive industries are in increasingly short supply.”

Moreover, the gap between human resource skills that industries and businesses need with what the education institutions, whether academic or vocational training are producing, is widening almost every year.

“Cambodia will have to tackle this growing skill gap if it is to achieve its vision of becoming an upper-middle-income country in the next two decades.”

“And subsequently move up the development ladder,” said the “Cambodia Education 2015 – Employment and Empowerment” report (authored by Dr Chhem Rethy, Dr Khieng Sothy and Dr Srinivasa Madhur).

Experts say less emphasis on research and development is another barrier that higher educational institutions need to surmount and ensure enough funding is allocated to promote science and technology, which is lacking at the moment.

“We need to reimagine education”, Princess Beatrice Elizabeth Mary of York told The Post last  Saturday during a visit to the Preah Sisowath New Generation School in the capital.

“I am inspired by the students and impressed by their mindset.”

“They are passionate and determined about their careers and want to be engineers, architects, doctors and lawyers.

“We have a challenge to educate young people to support the needs of the 21st-century workforce. We need to re-imagine education to (face) modern struggles,” said the princess.

In conclusion, a strong political will to push the national education agenda to power the country into a digitally empowered society and a knowledge-based economy is urgently needed.

For any progress the cornerstone is education.

Myanmar’s waters boast five of the world’s seven sea turtle species, including the critically endangered hawksbill, the endangered green turtle and the olive ridley, leatherback and loggerhead turtles — all listed as vulnerable.

“If we don’t conserve the turtles properly, they will all disappear in the near future,” head ranger Phone Maw tells AFP on Thameehla island in the Ayeyarwaddy Delta.

The 56-year-old has devoted most of the last two decades to the creatures, scouring the island’s 1.5-mile (2.5-kilometre) long coastline three times a night for nesting females.

The reptiles, which can grow to more than a metre in length and weigh as much as a large piano, lay around 100 eggs in a hole dug with their hind flippers before covering the clutch with sand and returning to the water.

Poachers are the first danger, even at this conservation site dedicated to the marine reptiles.

Turtle eggs can sell for a dollar each, around 10 times the price of a chicken egg.

Crab gauntlet

So Phone Maw and his colleagues dig up the newly laid eggs and rebury them in a protected area until they hatch 50 to 60 days later.

Putting them back at the right depth is crucial.

Sea turtles have temperature-dependent sex determination — warmer temperatures produce more females while cooler temperatures result in more males.

Once hatched, the rangers release the baby turtles onto the beach and into the sea, where myriad predators await.

AFP watched as an army of red crabs scuttled to drag away some hatchlings while more fortunate siblings floundered to the frothy waters, the first hurdle of their existence complete.

But trawler nets are the biggest culprit in the turtles’ dwindling population, entangling the creatures which must surface to breathe.

Illegal dynamite fishing and sand dredging are also lethal and the effect of marine pollution has been devastating.

Southeast Asia’s waters are choked with plastic and more than half of the eight million tonnes dumped into the world’s oceans each year comes from just five countries: China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand.

In June, a dead green turtle washed up on a Thai beach, its stomach jammed with plastic shreds, rubber bands and other debris.

Days before, an autopsy of a pilot whale revealed 80 plastic bags inside.

This week a WWF report warned that unbridled human consumption had destroyed much wildlife worldwide, wiping out 60 percent of all fish, birds, amphibians, mammals and reptiles in the last half century.

Just two out of every 1,000 turtle hatchlings used to survive until adulthood, Phone May says.

“Now it’s even lower because of all the pollution,” he adds sadly.

Vishnu Viswanath, 29, and Meenakshi Moorthy, 30, died last week after falling from Taft Point – a popular overlook at the park that does not have a railing – and their bodies were recovered by park rangers last Thursday.

Viswanath’s brother told local media in India that he believes the couple were taking a selfie when the tragedy happened.

The last image of Moorthy before she died is thought to have been a selfie taken by another couple, where she can be seen in the background.

The pair, who lived in the United States, were travel enthusiasts and had a blog called “Holidays and Happily Ever Afters” that chronicled their adventures. “Is our life worth just one photo?” she wrote.

The last image of Moorthy before she died is thought to have been a selfie taken by another couple, where she can be seen in the background.

The authorities said park officials were investigating the deaths and the probe could take several days.

The couple fell almost 245m in an area surrounded by steep terrain, and rescuers had to use a helicopter to recover the bodies.​​​​​​​

The authorities said park officials were investigating the deaths and the probe could take several days.

The couple fell almost 245m in an area surrounded by steep terrain, and rescuers had to use a helicopter to recover the bodies.

The sombre inquiry coincided with the opening of a book of condolences at Leicester City’s King Power Stadium, where fans flocked to leave tributes to the man who transformed their club, their city and left them with possibly the greatest fairytale success story in the history of English football.

Investigators have already ruled out the presence of a police drone as the cause of the horrific accident in the club’s car park.

Leicestershire Police have handed over responsibility for the inquiry to the Department of Transport’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), which investigates all civil aircraft accidents in Britain.

Police did, however, move to dispel talk that one of their drones had been involved.

They said on their Twitter page that their drone had not been in flight when the helicopter left the stadium.

“We have recovered the digital flight data recorder [voice and data] … and one of our inspectors travelled back to Farnborough with it the same evening,” said the AAIB.

“Our inspectors … will today start working on the recorder, which was subject to intense heat as a result of the post-accident fire.

“Our inspectors are continuing to work with the police on site. We expect to be here until the end of the week, at which point we will transport the wreckage to our specialist facilities in Farnborough for more detailed examination. In the meantime, we are still gathering evidence as part of our investigation.”

The helicopter came down in a car park outside the ground about an hour after the end of a Premier League match. Police have named the other deceased as passengers Izabela Roza Lechowiczas, Nursara Suknamai and Kaveporn Punpare, plus pilot Eric Swaffer.

The Italian maker of the helicopter, Leonardo SpA, has already announced it is ready to assist the investigation.

Thousands of Leicester fans, as well as the club’s players and members of Vichai’s family, have already been to the ground to lay toys, scarves and wreaths in tribute to the beloved owner, who took over the club in 2010 and oversaw their incredible rise from the second tier to Premier League title winners in 2016.

Leicester had been due to play a Cup match overnight but it was postponed and it is not yet certain that Sunday’s Premier League game away to Cardiff will go ahead.