Wildlife Corridors of Bhutan

Bhutan's system of biological corridors is internationally recognised as one of the most ambitious and ecologically coherent habitat connectivity networks in the world. Unlike many countries where protected areas exist as isolated islands of habitat surrounded by degraded or intensively used land, Bhutan has constructed a national conservation architecture in which nine biological corridors link ten protected areas—five national parks, four wildlife sanctuaries, and one strict nature reserve—into a continuous patchwork of protected habitat spanning the entire country from its subtropical southern foothills to its high alpine north. Together, the protected areas and corridors cover approximately 52 percent of Bhutan's total land area, a proportion without parallel among nations of comparable size.

The Protected Area System

Bhutan's protected areas include some of the most ecologically significant landscapes in the eastern Himalayas. Jigme Dorji National Park in the northwest is the country's largest protected area, spanning an exceptional altitudinal range from subtropical valleys to snow-covered peaks above 7,000 metres. Royal Manas National Park in the south borders India's Manas National Park and Tiger Reserve, forming one of the largest contiguous protected areas in South Asia. Wangchuck Centennial National Park, established in 2008, is the largest national park in the eastern Himalayas. The biological corridors between these areas—upgraded in 2017 to protected area status equivalent to national parks under revised Forest and Nature Conservation Rules and Regulations—are managed as wildlife "highways" of intact habitat enabling animals to move freely between the main protected zones.

The Bhutan for Life programme, modelled on the Amazon Region Protected Areas programme in Brazil, has mobilised long-term sustainable financing for the protected area system through a transition fund structure involving the government, WWF, and international donors. The programme covers the ten protected areas and the Royal Botanical Park, as well as the nine biological corridors, providing sustained operational and conservation management funding through a period when donor project cycles would otherwise leave gaps.

Species and Connectivity

The corridors are particularly critical for wide-ranging species that require large territories or undertake long seasonal migrations. A 2021–2022 national tiger survey estimated that Bhutan harbours 131 wild Bengal tigers—a 27 percent increase over the 2015 count—demonstrating that the connectivity system is functioning as intended for this apex predator. Tigers have been documented using corridors to move between national parks, including in the Phibsoo Wildlife Sanctuary in the south, where camera traps have captured rare encounters.

Snow leopards occupy the high-altitude corridors of the north, moving between the alpine zones of Jigme Dorji National Park and Wangchuck Centennial National Park through passes and ridgelines that the corridor system protects from permanent settlement and agricultural encroachment. Elephants migrate seasonally through the southern corridors connecting Royal Manas with Phibsoo Wildlife Sanctuary and the contiguous protected areas of Assam and West Bengal in India. The golden langur—an endangered primate found almost exclusively in Bhutan and a narrow strip of adjacent Assam—depends on forested connectivity between its fragmented populations. Research published in Oryx using camera trap data from the Jomotsangkha biological corridor documented patterns of prey species occupancy that confirm the corridor's role in maintaining tiger population connectivity between national parks.

Threats and Conservation Challenges

The biological corridor system faces several threats, the most significant of which is infrastructure development. Road construction, particularly farm roads extended into corridor zones, fragments habitat and creates barriers to wildlife movement as well as providing access for poachers. The rapid expansion of the road network since the 1960s has introduced fragmentation pressures that the corridor system is designed to counteract but cannot entirely neutralise. Human-wildlife conflict along corridor boundaries—where elephants and tigers occasionally raid crops and livestock—is a persistent tension between conservation objectives and the livelihoods of communities living adjacent to protected areas. The Department of Forests and Park Services, which manages the protected area network, operates compensation schemes for verified livestock losses to wildlife and community ranger programmes that aim to make local communities stakeholders in conservation rather than adversaries of it.

References

1. "Protected Areas and Biological Corridors of Bhutan." Bhutan Biodiversity / CBD.
2. "Bhutan for Life Landscape." Bhutan for Life.
3. "Connectivity in National Policies: Bhutan." Conservation Corridor, 2023.
4. "A Rare Tiger Encounter in Bhutan's Phibsoo Sanctuary." World Wildlife Fund, Fall 2025.
5. "Occupancy patterns of prey species in a biological corridor and inferences for tiger population connectivity between national parks in Bhutan." Oryx / Cambridge Core.