- Hemanta Dhakal, an ornithologist based in the Nepali town of Pokhara, monitors vultures daily from his rooftop near Nepal’s new international airport, documenting bird movements and aircraft interactions.
- Pokhara, known as both Nepal’s tourism capital and vulture capital, hosts nine vulture species whose flight paths intersect with the airport’s runway and nearby rivers, cliffs, and former landfill sites.
- A past bird strike and frequent flights heighten safety concerns, while waste management issues and thermal currents continue to draw birds dangerously close to aircraft.
- Despite limited support from authorities, Dhakal trains airport staff, advocates for better management such as drones to shoo away the birds, and warns that unplanned infrastructure could undo decades of vulture conservation gains.
POKHARA, Nepal — On a May morning in Pokhara, Nepal’s tourist town in the lap of the world-famous Annapurna range, 40-year-old Hemanta Dhakal climbs to the terrace on the roof of his home, a few hundred meters away from the newly constructed international airport.
Armed with his binoculars, he scans the sky and then the runway, looking for vultures — particularly one with a yellow face and a slender, grayish-white body.
As the sun’s rays beat down on the tarmac, a constant buzz from turboprop airplanes landing and taking off and occasional cawing is interrupted by a blast echoing through the valley. “That’s the air gun they fire to drive the vultures away from the runway,” Dhakal says calmly. “They’re scaring away the vultures again.”
Unlike most researchers who need to travel to remote and often hostile terrain to observe birds and animals of interest, all Dhakal has to do is climb a few flights of stairs to get to his own lookout tower. When he’s not mentoring his undergraduate students or spending time with family and friends, the seasoned ornithologist and conservation campaigner spends time observing the vultures in and around the airport.
“This vantage point lets me observe how the birds and the airport interact every single day,” he tells Mongabay at his home in Pokhara’s Majheriatan area.
Dhakal’s hometown, which was recently officially anointed Nepal’s “tourism capital,” is also unofficially the country’s “vulture capital.” Residents of the valley get to see all nine species of vultures found in South Asia, including the white-rumped (Gyps bengalensis) and slender-billed vultures (Gyps tenuirostris), both critically endangered. There’s also the endangered Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), the yellow-faced bird that Dhakal looks out for around the airport.
For years, conservationists have documented vulture nesting sites in the region and tracked migratory routes for other threatened birds, such as the endangered steppe eagle (Aquila nipalensis), which pass through Pokhara.
But now, a 2.5-kilometer (1.6-mile) runway, part of the $216 million Pokhara International Airport, cuts through their flight path. Unlike the old domestic airport located away from the rivers and cliffs, the new international airport is closer to prime vulture sites such as the Bijaypur River and an old landfill. “Although there were some problems with the old airport as well, the new one brings the problems to the fore,” Dhakal says.
A recently published study led by Dhakal found that the environmental impact assessment of the airport ignored the challenges posed by large, “high-risk” birds such as vultures. A version of the report reviewed by Mongabay only talks about the Egyptian vulture, omitting other vulture species.
Dhakal’s study looks at the risk of airplanes colliding with birds by assessing how often the latter appear near the airport, how big they are, whether they fly in groups, how they search for food, and how they move through the air. The study found “significant” collision risks involving several species, including the Egyptian, white-rumped, slender-billed, Himalayan (Gyps himalayensis), griffon (Gyps fulvus) and red-headed vultures (Sarcogyps calvus).
On the morning of Jan. 16, 2023, less than a month after the airport opened, an airplane struck a steppe eagle upon approach for landing. Although the plane didn’t suffer major damage, the bird was killed. Airport officials quickly cleared the debris from the runway, according to a photographer who witnessed the incident and shared the photos online. That incident took place a day after a Yeti Airlines flight crashed near the airport, killing all 72 people on board. An investigation found the earlier crash was due to human error, and not a bird strike as initially feared.
The two incidents shortly after opening galvanized criticism of the new airport that had been brewing since the planning and construction stages. Besides the potential for bird strikes, the airport has become a geopolitical lightning rod: built with financing and engineering from China, Nepal’s neighbor to the north, it has drawn the ire of India, the country’s southern neighbor, which has been reluctant to approve direct flights from Indian cities, citing “security concerns.”
Chinese airlines have also been slow to launch new routes, blaming low passenger demand and lack of commercial viability. As a result, the airport has remained mostly idle since its official inauguration, frustrating local tourism operators and residents who had long demanded international connectivity. Adding to the controversy are allegations of corruption. A parliamentary probe into the procurement process for the project found gaps in transparency raised suspicions that up to $100 million — nearly half of the airport’s total cost — may have been misappropriated during the construction phase.
But domestic flights, mainly to and from the capital, Kathmandu, continue in full swing. The frequency of flights at the airport also contributes to the increased bird-strike risk, Dhakal says. Nearly one plane takes off or lands every half hour from early morning to late afternoon during the peak season.
Birds sometimes rest right on the runway. “During winter, the black tarmac absorbs more heat, attracting Egyptian vultures and other birds that bask on the surface,” Dhakal says. “It creates a real risk of bird strikes.”
For vultures and other large birds with long wingspans, thermal currents rising from the valley floor, especially during winter, make gliding efficient. Those same thermals that allow vultures to soar for hours are now drawing them dangerously close to incoming aircraft.
When the airport formally opened on the first day of 2023, a landfill site close to the airport had already been identified as one the potential challenges as it attracted large birds of prey such as vultures, eagles and kites, lured by the scent of discarded meat and waste. Even though the landfill has since been relocated, a recently published study documented that vultures continue to frequent the old site potentially due to food availability and the area’s closeness to nesting habitats such as forests, cliffs and rivers.
Despite these persistent challenges, officials were initially reluctant to seek expert help, local ornithologists say. “In the early days, the airport authorities weren’t positive about the work I did,” says Dhakal, who has been monitoring the vultures at the airport even before construction began in January 2017. “They used to talk about me as a bird guy with a long lens photographing every move on the runway.”
However, after Dhakal and his team from the Pokhara Bird Society organized training workshops for airport officials on identifying birds, their attitude changed, he says.
“These days the movement of birds in and around the airport has decreased significantly,” says Krishna Raymajhi, an official at the airport. “We use air guns to harass the birds so that they don’t come near the runway.”
He adds that following training from Dhakal and his team, officials can now identify birds and predict their behavior based on books they received from the ornithologists.
Raymajhi told Mongabay that because the airport doesn’t have a provision for a full-time ornithologist, it makes do with whatever resources are available. But these aren’t adequate to safeguard both birds and planes, according to the study led by Dhakal.
“The problem is systemic,” he argues. “To begin with, we need better waste management from the municipality as well as the airport, and better data to understand the movement of birds. The best thing airport authorities could do is to shut down the airport between 10 a.m. and 12 [noon] from September to January as bird activity peaks during those periods.”
But as that might not be a practical solution, airport officials could use drones to chase away the vultures, Dhakal says. Other international airports have used trained raptors to shoo wild birds out of high-risk areas, he adds.
“The risk of a fatal collision between birds and airplanes is pretty grave, but the lower-level airport staff haven’t been able to communicate it to their bosses,” Dhakal says, his tone grim. “We hope the government acts soon to avoid a future tragedy.”
From his position at the frontlines of the debate between conservation and development, Dhakal says he remains committed as ever to his cause. He continues to record bird sightings, nesting behavior, and interactions between vultures and aircraft. He shares his findings with bird conservation networks and government officials, in the hope it will spur action.
His work builds on decades of vulture conservation efforts in Nepal, which saw massive population declines in the 1990s due to the widespread use of diclofenac — a veterinary that proved deadly to vultures feeding on livestock carcasses. After a ban on the sale of the drug, and the establishment of community-led safe feeding areas for the birds, their populations began to slowly rebound, in what’s become a fragile conservation success story.
But now, Dhakal says, those gains could be lost. “It’s not just diclofenac anymore. It’s unplanned infrastructure that’s not friendly to birds.”
Through it all, Dhakal remains on his rooftop, binoculars in hand.
Banner Image: Ornithologist Hemanta Dhakal and his daughter look towards the runway of the Pokhara International Airport from their home in Majheripatan. Image by Abhaya Raj Joshi/ Mongabay.
Citations:
Dhakal, H., Bhusal, D., Ghimire, M., & Ghimire, P. (2025). Risks of avian collision at the Pokhara Regional International Airport, Nepal. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 197(7), 835. doi:10.1007/s10661-025-14329-3
Timilsina, B., Magar, M. B., Poudel, S., Bhusal, D., Gurung, D., Joshi, A. B., & Timilsina, Y. P. (2025). A socioecological assessment of vulture abundance and community perceptions before and after landfill site shift in Pokhara, Nepal. Ecology and Evolution, 15(7), e71684. doi:10.1002/ece3.71684
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