But he says his most effective weapon is a network of local volunteers who campaign against the illegal killing of the endangered animals and provide valuable information about the poachers.

Thousands of one-horned rhinos once roamed the plains of Nepal and northern India, but their numbers have suffered a dramatic decline in recent decades due to poaching and human encroachment of their habitat.

Rhino horn is prized for its reputed medicinal qualities in China, where a single horn can sell for tens of thousands of dollars on the international black market.

Nepal's rhinos were almost wiped out during the country's decade-long civil war, when poaching went unchecked as the army abandoned its posts in the national parks to battle a Maoist insurgency.

Since the conflict ended in 2006 the soldiers have returned to their posts in the Chitwan national park, around 230 kilometres (150 miles) southwest of Kathmandu, and the rhino population has begun to recover.

But conservationists say much of the credit should go to local community groups set up to protect the wildlife, which brings much-needed tourism income to an area where most people still scratch a living as subsistence farmers.

"When we launched our new wildlife trade programme in 2006 we realised that the rhinos weren't just staying in the park, where the army patrols," says WWF Nepal's wildlife trade manager Diwakar Chapagain.

"They were straying many kilometres beyond its boundaries, and those areas also needed to be protected."

With a little encouragement from WWF and the park authorities, community groups were formed in Chitwan's "buffer zone", an area of 750 square kilometres (290 square miles) around the park where rhinos, tigers and wild elephants often stray.

The groups campaign door-to-door and in schools, and perform educational dramas and songs about the impact of poaching, which experts say is often carried out by local people hired by traders in the capital Kathmandu.

Community volunteer Kul Prasad says people are gradually coming round to the idea that protecting the rhinos makes good financial sense.

"Often, people don't understand why we need the rhinos, and there is a lot of frustration about the damage they do to crops," says the 27-year-old, a professional nature guide.

"You have to keep going back and making your point. But it is working."

Nearly 300 National Parks staff and 700 soldiers now patrol the park in Chitwan.

But warden Pradhan says the difficulty of the terrain and the sheer scale of the park, which covers 932 square kilometres of jungle grassland, make it impossible to prevent poaching with patrols alone.

"After the rainy season the grass grows so high that you cannot see 50 metres in front of you," he tells AFP in his office in the heart of the jungle.

"The poachers come into the park last thing at night so that they can escape in cover of darkness. We cannot be everywhere and we simply don't have the capacity to completely control the poaching. So we are very reliant on local people to help us."

Porous borders, weak law enforcement and its proximity to China have made Nepal a hub for the illegal trade in animal parts, and one of the volunteers' most valuable contributions is providing information to authorities.

Last year, police raided the home of a Nepalese airline pilot following a tip-off from volunteers who heard he had been asking villagers about rhino poaching. He is now serving a prison sentence for illegal trading in wildlife.

The WWF says that since the establishment of community anti-poaching groups in 2006, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of rhinos being killed in the Chitwan area.

Nepal's last rhino count was conducted in 2008 and found 408 one-horned rhinos living in and around the Chitwan National Park, up from 372 in 2005, and the WWF believes the figure has increased further since then.

For the villagers of Chitwan, that is good news.

"So many young people are now leaving Nepal because they cannot find jobs here," says volunteer Nakul Lamichhana, 30.

"If we preserve our natural treasures and encourage tourism, we will be able to make a living at home."

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