Bardiya National Park in Nepal’s lowland Terai, one of South Asia’s biodiversity hotspots, is widely regarded as a conservation success. Populations of endangered species, including the one-horned rhinoceros, Indian elephant, Gangetic dolphin, and the Bengal tiger, have rebounded significantly in recent decades, drawing increased tourism and international attention. Yet the increase in wildlife has brought increased human-wildlife conflict. Bardiya was established in the 1970s on lands historically inhabited by the indigenous Tharu people, many of whom were displaced into a 507-square-kilometer perimeter park “Buffer Zone” as the area transitioned from royal hunting reserve to protected wilderness. Approximately 100,000 residents still reside within the zone, communities whose subsistence livelihoods depend on daily access to surrounding forests. Fishing, livestock grazing, and collecting fodder, firewood, or wild fruits and medicinal plants often bring people into daily contact with wildlife. Encounters can be fatal. Within the past five years, more than 36 people in Bardiya have died from tiger attacks alone. In this context, the landscape of conservation is also a landscape of conflict, where global ecological priorities intersect with indigenous traditions and local survival.
Situated in the Khata Corridor, a 15-mile-long swath of protected land along the Geruwa River that connects Bardiya in Nepal to the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary in India, the Tiger Track Ecolodge channels the economic benefits of wildlife conservation back into the communities who bear its risks. A 4,250 sq ft rammed earth lodge, designed by the nonprofit Building Bureau and completed in 2026, serves as both a community hub and accommodation for tourists, with office and reception space, staff accommodation, a dining hall, and guest cottages. A portion of lodge revenue is directed to a Single Women’s Wildlife Victim Fund, providing seed capital for microenterprises to families who have lost primary earners to wildlife attacks. Annual contributions also support the Community-Based Anti-Poaching Unit (CBAPU), whose volunteer Rapid Response Team – based at the lodge – intervenes in active human-wildlife conflicts. With this project, tourism becomes not only a driver of conservation, but a mechanism for local resilience.
The Ecolodge was founded by wildlife conservationist Hemanta Acharya, current Bardiya National Park Buffer Zone chairman and CBAPU leader, whose own father was killed by an elephant in 2010. Acharya has been a lifelong conservationist and worked for Green Park Bardiya for twelve years prior to formally establishing Tiger Track in 2019. He has served as a delegate to the World Ranger Congress and has worked alongside organizations like the World Wildlife Fund. Bardiya’s Community Based Anti-Poaching Unit is a group of 119 local villages with 3,366 youths (55% girls and 45% boys), all coordinated by Acharya from the Tiger Track Ecolodge, that spreads awareness about resource harvesting practices, organizes trash pick-up days, educates residents about human-wildlife conflict, mentors youth to become wildlife guides, and instills a passion for wildlife among local residents.
Architecturally, the Tiger Track Ecolodge responds to the erosion of indigenous building culture in Bardiya. Traditional Tharu mud plaster construction is rapidly being displaced by concrete and tin, materials that are thermally poor, culturally alienating, and environmentally costly. Building Bureau, a nonprofit that designs sustainable public buildings in the United States and in Nepal, reintroduced earthen architecture in a contemporary form: walls of rammed earth stabilized and reinforced with steel rebar for seismic resilience, and roofing of reclaimed terracotta tiles salvaged from nearby demolished farmhouses.
Through their construction and operation, buildings worldwide emit over 40% of greenhouse gases globally, directly contributing to a warming planet. As a natural resource with low embodied energy, unfired earth has far less environmental impact in construction than concrete or steel. Earthen architecture is indigenous to much of the world and is found across different climates. Earth construction is also traditional to the Himalaya and the Terai. It is affordable and low carbon. It can be built with low-skilled local labor and manual techniques. And its thermal mass preserves cool indoor temperatures, reducing the use of air conditioning. In Nepal, variation in soil types is expressed in the color of the walls, ranging from red to yellow hues. The use of local resources in the lodge honors the Terai’s vernacular building methods, and the use of rammed earth allows the structure to blend into the cultural and built environment of Bardiya and the Tharu people.
While modest in scale, Tiger Track acts as a demonstration project, reframing earth construction not as a vestige of the past but as a viable material for the future, with the potential to influence how an entire region builds under the pressures of tourism and environmental change.