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CONSERVATION

What finally emerged from the workshops and village meetings was a roadmap for Ladakh’s wildlife and people.

PHOTOS: ASHISH KOTHARI

Lives in harmony: A nomadic pastoralist in the Changthang plateau.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The writers are with Kalpavriksh – Environmental Action Group.

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