The local story
The twin ponds and the newt that left
Jore pokhri is Nepali for twin ponds, and that is exactly what you find: two small pools in a fold of forest above Sukhia Pokhari, with conifers around them and mist most afternoons. For decades this was one of the best-known breeding sites in India of the Himalayan salamander, a dark, warty newt with orange markings, now named Tylototriton himalayanus and earlier called T. verrucosus. It spends most of the year hidden in damp ground and leaf litter, and comes to still, shallow water to breed when the rains arrive.
In 1985 the ponds and their surroundings were declared the Jore Pokhri Wildlife Sanctuary, India's first sanctuary created for a salamander. It is tiny, but it mattered: an amphibian, not a tiger or a rhino, got its own protected area. Over the following decades the site was also developed as a tourist spot, with paved paths, railings, concrete edges and buildings around the water. Each change looked like an improvement for visitors. For a newt that needs soft, weedy margins and damp ground, each one took something away.
That is where the honest part of the story begins. Reporting by Mongabay in 2026 found that concrete paving and tourist infrastructure have altered the ponds so much that salamanders are no longer found breeding in the sanctuary. The animal survives in other ponds in the hills, among them Namthing Pokhri near Sittong, Pokhritar and Panch Pokhri. We still think Jorepokhri is worth a stop, but as a lesson in how protection can go wrong and a quiet forest pond, not as a place to see a newt.
