Ramsar Sites of Nepal: All 10 Wetlands of International Importance

Nepal has 10 Ramsar Sites, the term used for wetlands designated under the Ramsar Convention as Wetlands of International Importance. Together they cover roughly 60,561 hectares (about 605 square kilometres), spread from the hot Tarai floodplains near sea level up to glacial lakes above 4,700 metres in the high Himalaya. The Ramsar Convention is a global treaty for wetland conservation adopted in the Iranian city of Ramsar on 2 February 1971, the date now marked worldwide as World Wetlands Day.

Nepal became a Contracting Party to the Convention, with the treaty entering into force for the country on 17 April 1988. Its very first Wetland of International Importance, however, is recorded with an earlier designation date: Koshi Tappu, listed on 17 December 1987. Since then Nepal has added nine more sites in four rounds — three Tarai wetlands in 2003, four high-altitude lakes in 2007, Mai Pokhari in 2008, and the Lake Cluster of Pokhara Valley in 2016.

This page is the directory the /lakes catalogue points to when it cites Nepal's '10 Ramsar wetlands'. Below you will find every site with its official Ramsar site number, designation date, area, province, altitude and the national park or reserve it sits in, followed by fuller notes on the four sites that anchor most search interest: Koshi Tappu, Beeshazari Tal, Ghodaghodi Tal and Jagadishpur Reservoir.

The list below is ordered by Ramsar site number, which broadly follows the order in which each wetland was added to the Ramsar List. Six of the ten sites lie inside a national park or wildlife reserve; the remaining four — Ghodaghodi, Jagadishpur, Mai Pokhari and the Pokhara cluster — are protected through other arrangements such as reserved forests, bird sanctuaries or lake-management committees rather than a formal park.

Areas are the official Ramsar figures and cover the whole designated wetland, including surrounding marsh, forest and catchment, so they are usually larger than the open-water surface of the lake itself. The ten areas add up to the 60,561-hectare national total.

Koshi Tappu, listed on 17 December 1987 as Ramsar site no. 380, was Nepal's first Wetland of International Importance and remains one of its most significant. It occupies the floodplain of the Koshi (Saptakoshi) River in eastern Nepal, spread across Sunsari, Saptari and Udayapur districts of Koshi Province, at a low elevation of roughly 75 to 81 metres. The 17,500-hectare Ramsar site sits within the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve, a protected area gazetted in 1976, and consists of extensive reed beds, freshwater marshes, mudflats and river channels penned between the embankments of the Koshi barrage.

The reserve is above all a bird site. It records the highest number of globally threatened bird species of any protected area in Nepal and regularly hosts very large congregations of migratory and resident waterbirds — ducks, geese, storks, ibises, egrets, terns and waders — that use the Koshi floodplain as a wintering ground and migration stopover on the Central Asian Flyway. Flagship species include the swamp francolin and the Bengal florican, and the wetland is one of the last strongholds of the endangered wild water buffalo (arna) in Nepal, alongside Gangetic dolphin records in the river and gharial and mugger crocodiles.

Because it is a river wetland, Koshi Tappu is dynamic and exposed. The Koshi is notorious for shifting its course and for catastrophic floods, including the 2008 breach at Kusaha, and the reserve faces pressures from siltation, invasive plants such as water hyacinth and Mikania, grazing, and conflict with communities living around the embankments. It is managed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) and is a popular destination for birdwatchers, reached from Biratnagar or the East–West Highway near Kanchanpur, Sunsari.

Three lowland wetlands joined the Ramsar List together on 13 August 2003. Beeshazari Tal — officially the Beeshazar and Associated Lakes, site no. 1313, 3,200 hectares — is an oxbow-lake complex in the Inner Tarai of Chitwan, Bagmati Province, at about 286 metres. Its Nepali name means 'twenty thousand lakes', a nod to the maze of channels and ponds along the Barandabhar forest corridor. It lies in the buffer zone of Chitwan National Park and acts as a waterhole and wildlife corridor for one-horned rhinoceros, tigers and mugger crocodiles, and as one of central Nepal's richest birding sites.

Ghodaghodi Tal — the Ghodaghodi Lake Area, site no. 1314, 2,563 hectares — is the largest natural lake system of the Tarai, set in the sal forests of Kailali in far-western Sudurpashchim Province at about 205 metres. This cluster of oxbow and seasonal lakes is a biodiversity hotspot and a corridor linking the Churia hills to the plains, supporting marsh mugger crocodiles, the endangered three-striped roofed turtle and rich birdlife. It is not inside a national park; it is managed as a reserved-forest wetland and was declared a bird sanctuary in 2022. The lake carries deep cultural meaning for the local Tharu communities.

Jagadishpur Reservoir — site no. 1315, 225 hectares — is the smallest of the three and the odd one out: it is a man-made irrigation reservoir near Taulihawa in Kapilvastu, Lumbini Province, at about 197 metres, fed from the Banganga River and built up over the 1970s. Despite being artificial it is one of Nepal's premier sites for wintering and migratory waterbirds, drawing sarus cranes and numerous globally threatened species, and its proximity to Lumbini makes it an easy add-on for visitors to the Buddha's birthplace.

Four high-altitude lake systems were added on 23 September 2007, making Nepal a global leader in listing mountain wetlands. They are Gokyo and Associated Lakes (site 1692, 7,770 ha) in Sagarmatha National Park, Solukhumbu; Gosaikunda and Associated Lakes (site 1693, 1,030 ha), a sacred pilgrimage lake in Langtang National Park, Rasuwa; Phoksundo Lake (site 1694, 494 ha), Nepal's deepest lake, in Shey Phoksundo National Park, Dolpa; and Rara Lake (site 1695, 1,583 ha), Nepal's largest lake, in Rara National Park, Mugu. All four sit inside national parks and are prized as much for their glacial scenery and cultural significance as for their wetland biodiversity.

Mai Pokhari, listed on 28 October 2008 (site no. 1850, 90 ha), broke new ground as Nepal's first Ramsar site from the mid-hills. This small, forest-ringed sacred pond at about 2,100 metres in Ilam, Koshi Province, is the smallest of all ten sites but is important for its old-growth mid-hill forest, amphibians and religious value to local communities.

The most recent addition is the Lake Cluster of Pokhara Valley (site no. 2257), designated on World Wetlands Day, 2 February 2016. At 26,106 hectares it is by far the largest Ramsar site in Nepal, taking in nine lakes of the Pokhara valley in Gandaki Province — including Phewa, Begnas and Rupa — together with their surrounding catchment. Open water is only a small share of the total; most of the area is the hill catchment that feeds the lakes and supports both biodiversity and Pokhara's tourism economy.

A wetland is added to the Ramsar List only if it meets at least one of nine internationally agreed criteria. In brief, these cover: (1) a representative, rare or unique natural wetland type; (2) support for vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered species or threatened ecological communities; (3) support for populations important to a biogeographic region's biodiversity; (4) support for species at a critical life-cycle stage or in refuge during adverse conditions; (5) regular support of 20,000 or more waterbirds; (6) regular support of 1 per cent of a waterbird population; (7) support for a significant proportion of native fish; (8) an important fish food source, spawning ground or migration path; and (9) regular support of 1 per cent of a non-avian wetland-dependent animal population.

Nepal's sites qualify on different mixes of these grounds. Koshi Tappu, Jagadishpur, Ghodaghodi and Beeshazari are essentially bird-and-biodiversity wetlands: they meet criteria tied to threatened species and, in the case of the Tarai reservoirs and lakes, large waterbird congregations. The high mountain sites — Gokyo, Gosaikunda, Phoksundo and Rara — qualify largely as rare and representative high-altitude wetland types that support specialised alpine and endemic species, including endemic snow-trout at Rara. Mai Pokhari and the Pokhara cluster combine representative wetland types with rich biodiversity and cultural value.

The criteria matter because designation is not just an honour: it commits Nepal to maintain the ecological character of each site, to plan its 'wise use', and to report internationally on its condition. That is why most sites now have management plans prepared by the DNPWC or partner bodies.

The Ministry of Forests and Environment is Nepal's Administrative Authority for the Ramsar Convention. On the ground, the six sites inside protected areas are managed by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, while the National Lake Conservation Development Committee (NLCDC) coordinates lake and wetland conservation more broadly. Nepal's approach is guided by a National Wetland Policy and the National Ramsar Strategy and Action Plan, and the country also maintains a longer national inventory of wetlands, known in Nepali as simsar, of which the ten Ramsar sites are the internationally recognised flagships.

The threats are broadly similar across the network but vary by altitude. Tarai wetlands such as Koshi Tappu, Ghodaghodi, Beeshazari and Jagadishpur struggle with siltation, invasive species (notably water hyacinth and Mikania), encroachment, pollution from farms and settlements, over-fishing and grazing. High-altitude lakes face pressures from unmanaged trekking tourism, waste, over-grazing and the mounting risk of glacial-lake outburst floods driven by climate change. The Pokhara cluster faces urban runoff, sedimentation and shrinking lake area as the city grows.

For visitors, most sites are reachable on established travel routes: Koshi Tappu from Biratnagar, Beeshazari from Chitwan, Ghodaghodi off the East–West Highway in Kailali, Jagadishpur near Lumbini, the Pokhara cluster from Pokhara city, and the mountain lakes on the Everest, Langtang, Dolpo and Rara trekking circuits. Winter is best for the Tarai bird sites, while the mountain lakes are visited in the spring and autumn trekking seasons.