Nepali wins Whitley Award 2025

The Himalayan yew has a chemical used to treat cancer, but it is an endangered coniferous tree which has been unsustainably harvested.

Some rare species of orchids in the Nepal Himalayan are prized in Chinese traditional medicine, and are smuggled across the border.

Nepali conservation scientist Reshu Bashyal has made it her life’s mission to save these two ‘flagship plants’ by protecting them from poachers and cultivating them sustainably to generate income for local communities.

For her work, Bashyal was recognised with the £50,000 Whitley Award 2025 presented by Princess Royal Anne on Wednesday at the Royal Geographical Society in London. The awards are given out by the UK-based Whitley Fund for Nature that recognises individuals working to foster grassroots action on conservation.

Bashyal works on research at the environmental non-profit Greenhood Nepal which has been involved in protecting the country’s biodiversity by using indigenous knowledge and finding ways to benefit local communities by protecting nature. 

“I first learned about the precarious status of orchids when I was in the field doing animal research,” Bashyal told Nepali Times on the phone from London. “I had no idea about the scale in which these plants, locally called ‘the monkey’s bananas’ were being harvested. I realised there was a lot to be done to save the orchid.”

Many orchid species found in Nepal are in high demand in Chinese and Indian traditional medicine as pain relievers, aphrodisiacs, ingredients in Ayurvedic medicine and as ornamental flowers.

Orchids were allowed to be legally exported before 2017, after which CITES put all but two species in its appendix, stopping its international trade unless it was harvested sustainably. Still, such is the demand that smuggling has continued.

Read also: Save Nepal’s orchids, Reshu Bashyal

“Distinguishing traded plant parts is hard, because when dry they can be mistaken very easily for other plants, like potatoes,” says Bashyal, who did her MSc in Environmental Science at Tribhuvan University and an MSc in Conservation and International Wildlife Trade from the University of Kent.

Some harvesters are simply not aware that it is illegal, and raising awareness is one of the first steps. Restoring the habitat of orchids and reducing poaching come next.

Bashyal hopes to form community-based task forces to monitor orchid smuggling, just as been done to stop poaching of tigers and rhinos in Chitwan National Park. 

Bashyal’s current project focuses on the Himalayan yew (Taxus wallichiana), especially the mature Maire’s yew, which are most sought after for their leaves. Sadly, there are as few as 500 such trees left in the wild now.

Maire’s yew is one of the three Taxus species found in the country. Taxus wallichiana (Himalayan yew) is found in central to east Nepal, and the rarer  Taxus mairei is found only in Kavre, Makwanpur and Sindhuli districts and is classified as ‘Vulnerable’ in the IUCN red list.

Harvesting 10,000 kgs of leaves of the yew tree, known in Nepal as the Lath Salla, yields only 1-2 kgs of DAB-10, a white powder used to produce taxol, which is needed to treat early and late-stage breast, skin, and ovarian cancer. 

It has always been illegal in Nepal to harvest wild yew, although it is legal if the trees are cultivated. Part of Bashyal’s work is also to understand how best to grow the trees commercially. 

“I talk to people who grow yew trees to understand how it is being done, and to learn and document the best harvest guidelines,” says Bashyal.

Such information will be key for the work she plans to do with the prize money of £100,000 over two years to focus research on five community forests in Makwanpur, where Maire’s yew is native. 

She and Greenhood Nepal also plan to restore 1,000 hectares of orchid habitat, plant 5,000 Maire’s yew, and create a 100-hectare community forest that will serve as a model to study and promote the best long-term practices.

Bashyal has faced funding challenges for her work because most conservation grants went to protect endangered animals like the red panda or pangolins.“We tend to think only of animals when we think about conservation, but all living species must be considered,” she says.

Bashyal is the fourth Nepali to win the Whitley Award in the last four years. Past winners include Raju Acharya in 2024 for safeguarding owls in Central Nepal, Tulshi Laxmi Suwal in 2023 for protecting pangolins, and Sonam Lama for monitoring and conserving red panda in Eastern Nepal.

Whitley shortlists 12 candidates each year, and awards are given to six candidates. This year’s shortlist included community-based conservationists from Tanzania, Indonesia, Colombia, Brazil and other countries in the Global South.