This analysis presents five landscapes and a suite of site outcomes that contain the priority species outcomes for the Eastern Himalayas Region that should be the focus of CEPF investment over the 5-year funding period. These conservation outcomes, prioritized and supported by the regional experts, provide the best opportunities for conservation success for CEPF. While CEPF supports civil society organizations, these groups will also have to build partnerships with government institutions, since many of the important site outcomes are protected areas vested under the management mandate of the respective government institutions responsible for biodiversity conservation. Because partnership building is part of the CEPF mandate, joint civil society-government initiatives fit within the scope of CEPF. But large areas of the landscape matrices in the corridor outcomes are owned (either through purchase, lease or customary rights) and managed by civil society. Thus, conservation in these corridor outcomes will have to involve and include local communities, CBOs and NGOs.
Several overarching proximate threats such as habitat loss and fragmentation, poaching and illegal logging, overgrazing by domestic livestock, and human-wildlife conflicts are causing irreversible damage to biodiversity in the region. Many of these threats are attributed to economic and social problems, although some are due to politically motivated issues. International donors are already providing considerable support to help resolve some of these issues, yet funding opportunities exist in many of the corridor and site outcomes identified in this profile, particularly since many major donors do not have specific biodiversity conservation foci in their projects. This should be CEPF’s niche and focus.
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