The people of Ladakh and its wildlife have
always co-existed peacefully. The creation of protected areas is the
cause of new tensions which have to be resolved.
What finally emerged from the workshops and village meetings was a
roadmap for Ladakh’s wildlife and people.
As we rounded a bend in the road, our headlights caught one of India’s
most elusive animals in their glare. The Eurasian lynx! And not one,
not two, but three of them… probably a mother and two grown-up cubs.
Startled by the sudden intrus ion, they stared momentarily at us, then
quietly bounded up the dark hillside out of sight. It was a truly
magical moment, one that probably comes only once in a lifetime to even
the most ardent wildlife enthusiast.
We were travelling in the Changthang region of Ladakh, on a quest to
understand and help in the process of reconciling wildlife conservation
with the livelihoods and development needs of the Ladakh people. This
trans-Himalayan part of Jammu and Kashmir is a vast cold desert. It
includes the rugged mountains and valleys of the Ladakh and Zanskar
ranges, and the vast plains and rolling mountains of the Tibetan
plateau in the Changthang region. Altitudinal variations in Ladakh are
large, from 2,200 m to over 7,000 m. Its assemblage of wildlife is
unique, adapted to harsh climates and scarce food conditions. The
iconic Snow leopard is the flagship, but other rare and threatened
animals inhabit the area: Tibetan wolf, Tibetan argali, Wild yak,
Tibetan gazelle, and the Tibetan antelope to name just a few of the big
ones. One of India’s most endangered birds, the Black-necked crane,
breeds in the marshes here before departing to its winter home in
northeast India. And though at first glance it appears like a
vegetation-less moonscape, there are actually over 600 species of
plants in the region.
Protected areas
Back in 1987, the State government had notified its intention to
constitute three protected areas for wildlife conservation. These are
the Hemis National Park in the central region close to Leh, the
Karakorum Wildlife Sanctuary in the northern (Nubra) part of the
plateau, and the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary towards the southern
boundary with China. Together, they would put a very substantial part
of Ladakh under the protection of the Wild Life (Protection) Act.
But while 20 years have elapsed since the initial notifications, the
State government has till recently not paid much attention to
management requirements, including posting adequate trained staff.
Possibly the biggest failure has been the settlement of rights of
people living inside….or rather, the lack of such settlement. The
J&K Wild Life (Protection) Act, under which these Protected Areas
(PA) were notified, requires that all rights of local people who reside
in or use the proposed PA, are recorded. Thereafter, the government can
decide to acquire and extinguish such rights, or allow some or all of
them to continue. It can also carve out some portions of the intended
PA in case of complications, changing the boundary and size of the PA
accordingly.
The trouble is, this process has to be carried out by revenue officials
(the district collector or someone appointed on his/her behalf), in
consultation with the forest department. Nothing was done till 2006,
when the Supreme Court asked State governments why they were not
finishing the process of settling rights. The J&K State government
then committed to completing this within one year, i.e. by October
2007. However, it began moving only in the middle of 2007. Settlement
officers were appointed for the three PAs, and the process of recording
rights initiated. However, the circumstances of wildlife conservation
and people’s use of the landscape are today distinctly more complex
than they were two decades back.
As elsewhere in India, Ladakh is faced with the challenge of
reconciling the imperatives of wildlife conservation with those of
meeting human needs. The biggest advantage that the region has over
many other places in India, however, is that for centuries the local
population, have co-existed in relative harmony with wildlife across
the entire landscape. A number of factors have contributed to this,
including Buddhist beliefs that do not allow hunting or fishing,
sophisticated practices of herding and land use, and a relatively low
population density. This is why one finds wildlife populations
(including species like the Snow leopard) interspersed with human
settlements and livestock pastures. Indeed, most villagers we met from
the three intended PAs during our recent visit to Ladakh were perplexed
about why their areas were chosen for protection, when in reality many
of the wild species were found outside them as well. They were also
extremely confused about why there is even a need for protected areas,
given that they have co-existed with wildlife for centuries.
However, other factors have led to threats to Ladakh’s wildlife. One of
the biggest is the presence of the armed forces. Stories abound of the
indiscriminate hunting that jawans carried out during and after the
1962 war with China, and across the landscape there are the ugly scars
of army installations and roads. Another is the influx of herders,
refugees from Tibet into the Changthang region, who do not necessarily
follow the practices of restraint and mobility of the local herders.
Serious erosion of some of the pastures has resulted from this and the
increase in local livestock populations, with likely negative impacts
on the Tibetan argali and Tibetan gazelle. Increasing tourism is also a
problem in some high altitude lakes due to garbage dumping and
vehicular traffic. Yet another issue is the incidences of Snow leopard
and Tibetan wolf killing livestock, which sometimes results in
retaliatory killings.
While the Snow leopard appears to be holding on quite well (from
available studies by local experts), some other species have been badly
affected. The Tibetan argali, the world’s largest species of wild
sheep, is down to about 250 in number. The Tibetan gazelle used to be
found in large numbers in the Changthang region, but indiscriminate
hunting by military and paramilitary forces and Tibetan refugees, and
habitat degradation has reduced its numbers drastically to possibly
about 100 individuals today.
Feeling the impact
Of late, local people have started feeling the impact of wildlife
protection measures. Villagers from Hemis and Changthang, for instance,
resent the fact that some basic “development” activities that they
would have been entitled to, such as roads, are being denied. In the 20
years since the PAs were declared, they say, no one has come to explain
to them what it means to have a national park or sanctuary encompass
their lands. In village after village we visited, residents seemed
angry and upset at how they were being dispriviliged by wildlife
regulations despite having been the ones to conserve wildlife across
the landscape.
In effect, settling people’s rights in Ladakh today is a far more
complex task than it was likely to have been 20 years ago.
Village level meetings that we attended brought out the brewing
discontent. In Hemis, at a meeting in Rumbak village, the residents had
no idea about the implications of their settlement falling within a
national park. They did not know that if finally notified, as per the
law, it would necessitate their relocation! In Changthang, anger was
palpable in some villages over the fact that a kaccha road had not been
paved, tourism facilities disallowed and in general, development
projects such as seen in and around Leh town, were being denied to them
in the name of the sanctuary. Many of these feelings were clearly
justified, but some other demands seemed motivated by individual vested
interests of powerful local people…including one to allow marble mining
near Pangong Tso, one of the region’s breathtakingly picturesque high
altitude lakes.
On the positive side, the region’s wildlife and government officials,
and politicians are unanimous that there is no question of either
displacing any villages from their current locations within the
proposed PAs, or extinguishing their traditional rights.
Open and transparent
In a unique process of open consultation, two workshops were held in
Leh in October 2007. Community representatives from each of the PAs,
officials from the Wildlife and other departments, members of the
Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC) including its Chief
Executive Councillor, members of the J&K Assembly, the Divisional
Commissioner, the settlement officers appointed for each PA, and NGO
representatives from Snow Leopard Conservancy – India Trust, Ladakh
Ecological Development Group, World Wide Fund for Nature, Nature
Conservation Foundation, and Kalpavriksh participated. The occasional
sharp exchanges between government officials and communities were
dissipated by a deeper and explicitly voiced consensus around the twin
needs of protecting wildlife and securing people’s traditional rights.
The path forward
An interesting exercise was carried out during the workshops, where
representatives from each PA listed out all the kinds of rights that
people have traditionally enjoyed within their area. They also
identified parts of their landscapes that they felt were vital for
wildlife conservation. These were depicted on rough maps. Villagers
from Hemis, for instance, mapped several valleys that they said should
be strictly protected, from where they were even willing to withdraw
grazing and other resource uses. They were not talking in the air:
about six months ago, all the households in Rumbak village in Hemis
National Park, decided to leave an area of 16 sq km free of grazing to
allow the threatened Tibetan argali a fighting chance to increase its
numbers, which currently is just 18 individuals in the Park.
What finally emerged from the workshops and village meetings was a
roadmap for Ladakh’s wildlife and people. It was recommended that a
mosaic of different types of protected areas be created by identifying
areas that are or should be inviolate for wildlife use, and others
where human habitation and use continues. This was especially
emphasised for Hemis where there are currently 16 settlements, and
where relocation is unnecessary and impossible. The area could be
reconfigured using various legal categories of conservation. An
extension of the time deadline to complete the process of settlement of
rights in the PAs was also proposed given that the local people in the
three PAs have only recently understood the implications of the J&K
WLPA.
The process initiated in October last year will continue over the next
few months. However, only time will tell if this will help the
traditionally peaceful mosaic of humans and wildlife in this unique
landscape survive the current challenges.
http://www.thehindu.com/mag/2008/03/23/stories/2008032350080400.htm
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© 2008, The Hindu.
