The region has the highest density of the Bengal tiger and is the last bastion of the charismatic greater one-horned rhino.

With the WWF saying that many new discoveries waiting to be made, there is hope yet for the yeti, for whom a horde of expeditions have been launched since 1953, when Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa reported seeing large footprints in the snow which were attributed to the elusive yeti.

Though Hillary's yeti expedition was deemed a failure after the skins and scalps it returned with as trophies were found to be bear skins and a goat skull, it has not deterred explorers.

Another mountaineering legend, Italian Reinhold Messner, who was the first man to conquer Mt Everest without bottled oxygen, claims he met the yeti - an almost 200 cm furry, gentle creature - not once but four times, wrote a book on his quest and plans to establish a yeti museum.

There have been two Japanese expeditions in Nepal to photograph the yeti and though they were not successful, the quest lives on.

Two years ago, American television channel Destination Truth, which searches for the bizarre and dangerous, returned from eastern Nepal with unusual footprints that it says could be the yeti's.