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NATURE
CONSERVATION IN THE TIBETAN AREAS
OF SICHUAN AND GANSU PROVINCES
BILL BLEISCH
and HOWMAN WONG
CHINA
EXPLORATION AND RESEARCH SOCIETY
August 11, 1990
I.
ANOTHER GREAT WALL
II.
MOUNTAINS, VALLEYS AND THE HIGH PLATEAU
III. THE MODERN WORLD COMES TO TIBET: LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND NOMADIC
ON THE SLOPES OF MINYA KONKA
PROTECTION OF THE GODS
I.
ANOTHER GREAT WALL
The drive from Chengdu, the
capital of Sichuan Province, to the Aba Tibetan Autonomous Region begins
as a monotonous trip along a traffic-clogged highway through flat,
densely-populated farmland. Just as the riders begin to doze off, a wall
of mountains suddenly appears out of the rice-covered plains. These are
the foothills of the great Tibetan plateau, and this wall has been as
effective as the Great Wall at separating the cultures of the Han
Chinese majority of the plains and the Tibetans of the mountains. To the
east and south are the busy modern capital of Chengdu and
densely-populated plains of the red basin of Sichuan, an area with a
long history of habitation by sedentary Han Chinese farmers. From here
it is less than a days drive north and west to Tibetan cultural centers
such as Zorgei, surrounded by roadless expanses inhabited only by
nomadic Tibetan herders. Despite a long history of infiltration by
Chinese traders, bureaucrats and technicians, within one day of Chengdu
it is possible to be in an area every bit as Tibetan as Lhasa itself.
The name "Tibet"
evokes a vision of a Shangri-la kingdom isolated by massive mountains
and impassable cold wastes. Ruled from Lhasa the ancicent kingdom of
Tibet covered the vast remote expanse lying north of the Himalayas and
east of the Taklamakan desert. Much of this region is now included in
the Western Tibetan Autonomous Region, known outside of China as the
Province of Tibet, and recently closed to foreigners in the wake of
civil unrest. In fact, the Tibetan people can be found throughout a much
larger area, including Qinghai Province, southern Gansu Province and the
western half of Sichuan Province. Over one million Tibetans live in
western Sichuan alone, comprising one quarter of the entire Tibetan
population of China. Some of these Tibetan areas have been more-or-less
under Chinese influence and administration for several generations. In
other areas, the link with Beijing is a weak one.
In addition to isolating Tibet
from the cultural influences of China proper, geography has created
another great division of cultures in this area, but this division is
among the Tibetans themselves. A satellite photo of the region of
northwestern Sichuan shows a startling feature which is the source of a
deep difference in the way of life of Tibetans. To the east, the land
presents a texture of dense corrugations which at ground level reveal
themselves to be deep river valleys separated by almost unscalable
ridges. In these valleys live Tibetan farmers who grow barley and beans
on the valley floor and on terraces perched on the steep valley walls.
Just as striking as the rough corrugations in the eastern half of the
photo, the western half has the smooth texture of a putting green. From
a ground's eye view, this uniformity becomes the gently rolling
grasslands and flat marshlands of the high plateau, home of nomadic
herders. Although both farmers and herders are Tibetans, speaking
dialects of a common language and sharing a common faith, their daily
lives are dramatically different.
Geography has as much effect
on the flora and fauna of the region as it has on the people. Through
evolution, isolation gives rise to innovation, and the number of unique
life-forms found in an area often seems to be proportional to its
inaccessibility. High mountain ridges and deep valleys present
insurmountable boundaries to many plants and animals. The difference in
climate between valley floor and mountaintop can be as great as the
difference between the tropics and the poles. Thus the mountains present
a hodge-podge of climates and topography, from nearly subtropical to
alpine. But the heart of Tibetan country is the vast plateau, almost all
of it over an elevation of 12,000 feet in elevation. In many regions,
this plateau is an alpine meadow spread from horizon to horizon. Other
areas are desert, but desert of such high altitude that winter cold
dominates the climate and the adaptations of the flora and fauna.
The highlands of Asia have
been a source of fascination for the outside world since the time of
Marco Polo. Over the years, tales of unicorns, dragons and phoenixes
have been replaced by scientific descriptions of alpine antelope, giant
river sturgeon and rare multicolored pheasants, but the fascination
remains. A crossroads in this treasury of exotica is the jumble of
mountain ranges and river valleys in western China, where the deserts of
the north, the tropical forests of the south, the temperate life-zone of
central China and the unique fauna of the highlands of Tibet all come
together. This was the territory stalked by the great
naturalist-explorers, such as Rock, Wilson and Andrews, who were among
the first Europeans allowed to penetrate deep into the heart of the
continent. Here in 1925, Teddy Roosevelt's two sons mounted their
expedition which brought back a specimen of the giant panda, first
described by the naturalist-missionary Pere David 56 years before. The
botanist E. H. Wilson hailed this region as home to the richest
temperate flora in the world, and it is also a center of diversity for
many taxa of animals, including the goat-antelopes, an odd collection of
relatives of the Rocky Mountain goat, the pheasants, which display their
most spectacular variety of colors and forms in China, and the babblers,
a diverse group of obstreperous songbirds. Even today Chinese scientists
continue to discover new and undescribed species in this biological
cross-roads. And in addition to being a well-spring of diversity, this
region is now the last refuge for many life forms which once ranged much
more widely.
Recently, several
multi-disciplinary expeditions organized have had rare
opportunities to explore the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau and
adjacent mountain ranges. We recently completed a trip to the Tibetan
regions of western Sichuan, funded in part by a grant from the Roger
Tory Peterson Institute. One of the goals of this trip was to assess the
fate of the spectacular wildlands and wildlife of this area, which are
now under siege as the program of rapid modernization reaches even the
most remote parts of China. Top
II.
MOUNTAINS, VALLEYS AND THE HIGH PLATEAU
Mountains have always been and
will probably continue to be the last refuges of much of the world's
wildlife. In this sense, eastern Tibet is blessed, since much of the
land is covered with sharp ridges and deep valleys which even today
makes getting from point A to point B an adventure. Perhaps because of
this remoteness, Tibetan regions still harbor an extraordinary number of
interesting wildlife species. The story of the panda has been told well
elsewhere, but the same forests that are the last stand for the panda
are also home to a blue-faced, snub-nosed, golden-haired monkey, the
largest monkey in Asia and one of the few primates that can cope with
the harsh winters of these high mountains. Not far from these forests
one can still find signs of the takin, the big-nosed forest-dwelling
goat-antelope whose nearest relative is the musk-ox of the North
American arctic. In some areas, locals still speak of the "mountain
ass" ("Shan l" or "jakala" in the local Kham
dialect of Tibetan), an animal described as having the body of a small
horse with the sharp short horns of a goat. This is not a bad
description for the serow, neither ass nor horse, but an Asian relative
of the European chamois and the North American Rocky Mountain goat. In
these same forests live many of the ten species of deer found in this
region, some no larger than a fox terrier, and one as large as the North
American wapiti. Among the smaller deer are the much-persecuted musk
deer. These tiny deer have no antlers. Instead, males sport sharp tusks
and secrete a smelly resin from glands on their thighs. These glands
have been the musk deer's misfortune. They are the sole source of musk
used by Asians everywhere as medicine and by people the world over in
perfumes and scents. They fetch a good price even in remote markets and
a musk deer can provide a welcome windfall of cash for the farmer who
can spare a little time for hunting or setting snares. At this point,
the musk deer may be on its way to extinction in the wild, although
getting population estimates of a tiny deer that lives in remote
mountain forests is no easy task. Luckily, the little deer breed well in
captivity and Chinese "musk farms" recently have had success
in extracting the valuable musk without killing the deer. Eventually,
this may decrease the demand for the wild product and give the musk deer
a reprieve from extinction.
Musk deer are not the only
species of wildlife in trouble. In low water seasons, on the dried
riverbanks of the upper Yellow River in southeastern Gansu's Maqu
County, Tibetans occasionally uncover massive subfossil horns, often
four feet across and as much as a foot in diameter at the base. These
are not the remains of some long-extinct giant mammal but the horns of
the enormous wild yak which roamed the plateau in huge herds until
relatively recently. Males may stand over six feet tall at the shoulder
and weigh almost two tons. Once they must have roamed over most of the
grasslands of Tibet. Now, the world's wild yak population has declined
to an estimated 20,000, now all restricted to remote areas of western
Tibet and the southwestern potion of Qinghai Province in the Tanggula
mountain range. .
The grasslands of the high
plateau begin where the trees succumb to the combined effects of high
altitude, low rainfall and harsh winters. In summer this region is a
grazer's paradise, but only if the grazer can cope with the rigorous
conditions of winter in the open above 12,000 feet. Among those that can
are the huge wild yak, the argali or bighorn sheep , the white-lipped
deer and the goa or Tibetan gazelle. In dryer areas live the kiang or
wild ass and the chiru or Tibetan antelope. Older Tibetans living in
southwestern Aba, right on the fringes of the Han-dominated Chengdu
plains, still carry knives with antelope horn handles. Today however,
wild ass, yak, argali and the other large mammals of the grassland are
gone from most of the Aba plateau of Sichuan, victims of over-hunting
and over-grazing.
Although the wild herds have
disappeared, in the summer the Aba region still boasts a rich fauna of
migratory birds. Nesting waterfowl, including ducks, geese, snipe,
grebes and mudhens are still abundant in many of the small lakes which
dot the grasslands. The stately black-necked crane, the only alpine
crane and one of the world's rarest birds, occasionally can be seen
parading in pairs over the wetlands. In Tibetan, its name is "Gezaerdaze",
a reference to the most famous Tibetan king, King Gezaer. The crane is
believed to be the incarnation of the king's loyal stable keeper, and
thus it is a symbol of purity and high status. Cranes are most often
seen in pairs on the plateau and it is widely believed that if one of a
pair is killed, its mate cannot bear to live alone and will soon die as
well (Qinghai Fengwuzhi, 1985). As a result, no traditional Tibetan will
knowingly harm them.
Soon, other wildlife of
the Tibetan plateau may also get a well-deserved break from hunting. In
the northwestern part of the Tibetan plateau is an area called the Chang
Tang, an area so bleak and barren that most of it is uninhabited even by
the hardy Tibetan nomads. Despite its extreme climate, the area has
large herds of Tibetan antelope and wild ass, as well as snow leopard,
bear, wild yak, gazelle and bharal or blue sheep. George Schaller and
Chinese scientists have recently performed wildlife censuses in this
vast area and have advised the provincial governments involved to create
one huge conservation area in an uninhabited portion of the vast Chang
Tang. If the proposal is accepted, this reserve would be roughly as
large as the state of California, making it the largest wildlife reserve
in the world.Top
III.
THE MODERN WORLD COMES TO TIBET: LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND NOMADIC
Tibet's vastness and
forbidding frontiers have isolated it from the modern world until
recently. But the global market has reached to even the remote regions
of the Tibetan nomads. It is hard to imagine that a family that sleeps
most of the year in a simple open tent of woven black yak hair, whose
diet consists almost entirely of milk, butter and barley, and who may
live hundreds of miles from the nearest paved road can be modern
"millionaires". But this is one of the ironic effects of
China's breathtaking rush into a free-market economy. A family of
Tibetan nomads may own upwards of 100 yaks and 500 sheep. With a single
yak now bringing as much as 400 yuan (about $100 by the official rate)
on the new open market, many nomads can now afford such luxuries as tape
players, motorcycles and fancy jewelry. Traditionally a Tibetan's dream
of a lifetime was a pilgrimage to the holy city of Lhasa. Some would
trek for months to get there. Others would lengthen the travel time to
years by prostrating the entire distance, measuring every foot of the
path with their own bodies. Devout Tibetans still undertake pilgrimages
but many are now able to afford even more than one trip to Lhasa during
the slack winter months. We met a young Tibetan who used his annual wool
income and money he earned from selling six sheep to go on another type
of pilgrimage; to Beijing to see the sights. He set off with four
friends, their knifes tied on their waists and their money stashed next
to their chests in their thick sheepskin coats.
With newfound prosperity comes
new pressures on wildlife. Among the other luxuries that nomads crave
are furs to trim their outer coats. Otter and leopard pelts are
preferred above all others, although prices are high. Despite high
prices, many Tibetans are now willing and able to pay these prices. On
market day on the main street of Zorgei, we estimated that more than 10%
of the Tibetans sported real fur trim. Judging by the number of people
with cheap imitation leopard, there is plenty of demand for more real
skins, but it is doubtful that there are enough leopards in all of
Sichuan to supply them.
A Hui merchant can ask 500 to
600 yuan for a single otter pelt, and 1000 yuan (about $250) for a whole
leopard skin, enough to trim three coats.
Despite their furs, most
nomads are Buddhists, a faith which teaches that life of any kind is
sacred. The faith has had a tremendous resurgence among Tibetans since
the end of the Cultural Revolution. The spiritual leaders of devout
Tibetans have always been the rinpoches or "living buddhas",
but the intolerance of the Cultural Revolution made the rinpoches one of
the main targets of persecution. During the long years of oppression,
rinpoches were defrocked, forbidden from preaching, jailed and often
tortured. In 1979 however, the rinpoches of Labrang and neighboring
monasteries of the Amdo region were released from prison and allowed to
reopen their monasteries. Partly with funds from the government and
partly with donations of money and labor from the Tibetans themselves,
some of the monasteries, stupas and temples which were destroyed or
defaced by the Red Guard were rebuilt. Young Tibetan boys were once
again allowed to train as monks in the monastery schools and religious
festivals again marked out the cycle of the Tibetan year. The lamas even
regained some of their secular influence. In 1988, when local
authorities could not resolve a dispute between nomads over grazing
rights, the local rinpoche was called in to fill his traditional role as
mediator.
Despite these signs of the
resiliency of traditional Tibetan culture and religion, the the
upheavals of the past three decades has changed the Tibetan way of life
forever. A network of roads and an influx of new ideas and new settlers
has connected these remote areas with the rest of China and with the
modern world.
Inevitably, these changes have
affected the relationships of the nomads to their environment, including
their use of wildlife. Tibetan nomads have probably always been avid
hunters, but traditional beliefs put severe restrictions on what and
where they could hunt. In the past, hunting was mainly for food, and
meat had to be shared with any and all who were in the vicinity. In
1985, one of us witnessed a traditional nomadic hunt. On our trek to the
glacier source of the Yangtze river on the Qinghai plateau, our Tibetan
guide took down a single grazing antelope from a herd with his rifle and
shared the meat with a couple of dozen nomads during a summer festival.
The following day we passed by many small herds of antelopes, but our
guide never turned his head or raised his rifle. This kind of casual
subsistence hunting is probably not a danger to the wildlife population.
But in recent years, the hunting pressures have increased tremendously.
The disappearance of many game
animals coincides with the appearance of high-powered accurate rifles in
the area, and with the opening of new markets for wild meat. One Tibetan
party official told us that during the war of liberation and famine
which followed, the troops in these areas were ordered to live off the
land. He worked as an army hunter and shot a great deal of wildlife,
including a large number of wild ass, now rare in these areas. With the
opening of new roads, new markets for wild animal products have also
opened up. For example, antelope horns, which are still used as tent
stakes by the nomads of the Tanggula Range, are valued as a source of
medicine by Han Chinese, and providing a huge market for Tibetan
wildlife products. These new markets even reach beyond China's borders.
West Germany imports 200 to 400,000 pounds of wild blue sheep meat from
China each year. And hunting for sport may be on the rise as traditional
Tibetan values break down. Han-Chinese and Tibetans with a more
"modern" outlook have no qualms about hunting whenever and
wherever they please. Party cadres, soldiers and well-traveled truck
drivers have disseminated these new attitudes towards wildlife
throughout the Tibetan areas. In 1987 in Litang County, we witnessed a
nomad blast an eagle out of the sky with his new semi-automatic rifle.
When asked why he shot the eagle, he offered no explanation. Eagles are
common in most nomadic areas, and it may be no accident that in Litang,
where their prey are especially abundant, eagles were a rarity in 1988.
The wild animals adapted to
the harsh conditions of the plateau once must have roamed the grasslands
of Aba in huge numbers, judging by the number of sheep and domestic yaks
this area now supports and by the few reports from explorers who
traveled through these areas. Today, wildlife are found only in the most
remote parts of Tibet and have vanished from most of the Aba plateau.
Near Taksan Lhamo, where in 1928 the anthropologist Ekvall and his
Tibetan friends hunted gazelle not far from their grazing herds, gazelle
are now a rarity. Over-hunting is certainly one reason. Another factor
which may be as important is the competition between wild grazers and
domestic cattle. The Aba region has witnessed a population explosion of
nomads and their cattle in recent years. Nomads have immigrated into the
Aba region in search of fresh pasture. New markets for Tibetan meat and
milk have opened up and the population of cattle has boomed. As the
herds of domestic yak and sheep expand, there is less and less grazing
left for wild grazers. Widespread over-grazing has occurred in many
areas, and wild grazers may have been the first to pay the price.
While large mammals
grazers loose out in competition with the nomads and their herds, some
forms of wildlife may actually have benefited from the changes. Pikas or
mouse-hares seem to be more abundant in over-grazed areas, and the
populations of eagles may have increased accordingly. It is a common
sight in Tibet to see golden eagles gliding by in search of an unwary
pika. Wolves may have plenty to eat, since they do not discriminate
between wild and domestic prey, and they may still be abundant in some
areas, despite the fact that they are hunted ruthlessly by the Tibetan
nomads. After all, no nomad wants to share his flock with a hungry wolf.Top
ON
THE SLOPES OF MINYA KONKA
While wildlife on the
grasslands have been deeply affected by the changes in Tibet, remote
mountain peaks and valleys often serve as refuges of isolation where
wildlife remains abundant. The towering peak called Minya Konka is not
part of the Himalayan range, which ends far to the west of Sichuan, this
peak rises to an awesome 7556 meters (24,900 feet), making it the
highest peak east of the Himalayas. Its slopes were explored by the
botanist and adventurer Joseph Rock in 1929 and first climbed by a four
man American team (including members of the Harvard Mountaineering Club
and a Chinese-American) in 1932. We revisited Minya Konka, not with the
purpose of climbing it or discovering some new and notable flower, but
rather to document the changes that have come to remote areas like this
one. After a nearly disastrous car trip along a road which washed away
into the river behind us as we watched, we arrived at the roadhead. A
three day horse trip brought us to a pass at 15,300 feet, where the snow
was already thick in early September. Below the pass lies the tiny
village of Qimi on the foot of Minya Konka.
The isolation of Minya Konka
has protected its wildlife from the over-hunting and habitat destruction
so common in other areas. During our short stay, we saw game birds such
as snow partridge, snow pigeon and white eared-pheasant and found signs
of other wildlife. Blue sheep are still relatively common on the ridges
around the pass, protected more by their isolation than by any religious
beliefs. On our way into the mountain, we met two Tibetan hunters from
the nearby town of Jiulong who had traveled here to hunt. With their
semi-automatic rifles they had bagged two blue sheep. After they
realized that we were not interested in buying the sheep heads, they
were very reticent about giving out information that might lead us to
their favorite hunting spots. The two hunters we met in the village of
Qimi, were much friendlier. In the morning shadow of Minya Konka, we
talked about wildlife over tea and tsampa (ground parched barley, mixed
into a paste with tea and yak butter). They showed us skins of blue
sheep and of a white-rumped deer, and the horns of a takin which
decorated the doorway of a neighbor's house. When we got to the subject
of bears, they proudly brought out the paws, pelt and head of a black
bear they had killed just the day before. They hunted bear for more than
just the thrill of it. The salted paws and smoked gall-bladder would be
sold for a high price to Chinese traders who would resell them as
medicine in the wealthy cities of the east.
The use of wild animal parts
in medicine is wide-spread throughout Asia, and especially common in
Tibet and China. Tibetan medicine is widely practiced on the plateau and
is taught at monastic centers of learning. Despite the seeming
contradiction with the Buddhist proscriptions against killing animals,
many common and rare animals are prescribed as drugs and remedies. The
Tibetan university at the Kum Bum Gomba in Qinghai maintains a museum of
stuffed animals on its balcony, perhaps for reference by students of
medicine. The endangered wild ass is prescribed for curing skin disease
and thyroid problems, snow leopard bones are used for rheumatism,
white-lipped deer antlers and tail are said to have superb rejuvenating
power, bear bile is a cure for pain, diarrhea and fever, antelope horn
is prescribed for mental sickness and cramps. In a catalog of Tibetan
medicine, besides exotica such as snail meat, snow lizard, turquoise,
vulture heart and even human flesh, bone and spine, there are also
listings of exotic wildlife such as argali sheep, badger, monkey,
marmot, musk deer, otter, peacock and rhinoceros.
(Jampal Kunzang, 1973) ..(Xizang
Fengwuzhi, 1985).
The local Tibetan marketplace
may have put some pressure on certain wild species, but this is nothing
compared with the effects of the opening of a new market to the east; a
market of a billion people or more! In the past few years, the
traditional trickle of trade from Tibetan areas to the outside world has
become a flood, and medicinals make up a huge part of it. With the
opening up of these remote regions, huge demand for medicinal herbs such
as beimo (Fritillaria sp.) and the strange "summer-root
winter-worm" (actually the larvae of a beetle mummified after it is
infected with the fungus, Cordyceps chinensis) have sent Tibetans
up into the hills in droves to collect these new cash-earners. Perhaps
the most amazing story is that of the zongyong or Mitsutaki mushroom. We
agreed with our Tibetan friends that this mushroom tasted quite
ordinary, but in Japan it is believed that regular doses of it can
prevent cancer. Exceedingly rare and expensive in Japan, it is now
imported at considerable expense from Tibet. Since it has to be eaten
fresh for full effect, it must be carried out of remote areas as rapidly
as possible. In Litang, we met a modern caravan for carrying fresh
mushrooms to the east. This caravan was not made up of the traditional
pack yaks, but of a landcruiser and two shiny new refrigerated trucks
which had been driven all the way from the new economic zone of Shenzhen
on the east coast of China to bring back fresh mushrooms. We heard of
another such operation using helicopters. It is a strange lesson of the
increasing interconnectedness of people and places in the modern world
that the fortunes of Khampa farmers in remote valleys of Tibet may now
be directly linked to the ups and downs of Japan's markets. With the
increasing wealth of Asia, the demand for rare medicinal herbs within
China and beyond has been climbing, and we can expect an increasing
market for products from rare wildlife as well.
The value of commodities
like this has not gone unnoticed by Tibet's new capitalists. A
successful musk deer farm near Barkam has begun a major new venture to
harvest gall bile from captive bears without killing them. To start this
operation off, seventy young bears were purchased in 1988, at a total
cost of over 250,000 yuan (about $60,000). We had mixed feelings when we
saw the sad-looking bears with tubes hanging from their bellies,
spending their lives in tiny cages, but this new technology may be the
only hope for the remaining wild bear, unless the world demand for bear
gall declines.
For more about Gonggar
and Hailuogou
Top
PROTECTION
OF THE GODS
Hopes for profit have always
been a powerful incentive for hunters to push into more and more remote
areas in search of new and less-depleted hunting grounds. As demand
increases for animal medicinals and as hunting becomes poorer in more
accessible areas, we can expect more and more pressure on the wildlife
in refuges like Minya Konka, despite their isolation. Legal protection
can help, especially by restricting the trade in endangered animal
products. But legal protection requires enforcement and enforcement is
logistically difficult in the remote areas where much of the Tibetan
wildlife is found.
Despite these problems, some
of the wildlife of Tibetan regions receives another kind of protection
which may last long after the curtain of isolation has fallen. And this
protection may be far more effective in the local area than any
international treaty or national law.
Tibetan Buddhism teaches that
life is sacred and that it is a sin to harm other sentient beings.
Tibetan purgatory has a special Cold Hell, where the souls of those who
killed animals in their past life are doomed to stand naked in freezing
snow and ice. This is depicted in the famous wheel of life mandala,
known to every Tibetan Buddhist. Perhaps with their future in mind,
devout Tibetans often renounce the taking of life. In monasteries from
Jiulong to Lamasu, we saw the rifles offered by repentants who had
renounced their former hunting or warfare. Unfortunately, these are
invariably the ancient matchlocks of old men, not the modern rifles of
young Tibetan braves. After all, hunting is a strong tradition among
Tibetans, with deep roots. The ancient drama "Dunyudunju"
which we saw at the great Batang drama festival features two heroic
brothers learning the art of hunting with great enjoyment and vigo. In
fact, Tibetan dramas begin with a hunter sanctifying the performance
ground with a brightly colored arrow.
While Buddhist proscriptions
against harming nature confer limited protection to wildlife, some
wildlife gets much more specific and effective protection. On the slopes
of Minya Konka is a small monastery, Konka Gomba, dedicated to the lord
of this impressive peak. Like many Tibetan monasteries, Konka Gompa was
destroyed during the cultural revolution, and the monastery has been
rebuilt since 1982. But even without the monastery, no Tibetan would
hunt in the forest that surrounds the gompa, for Tibetans believe that
the forest belongs to the goddess of the summit and that she extends her
protection over the forest and its wildlife. Local villagers complained
that in many areas, visiting Han Chinese, including forestry department
employees, often "behave just as they please", hunting
everything and everywhere. However, even they would not dare to hunt in
this area, and therefore bear, leopard, serow, deer and takin can still
be found in some abundance.
Many other areas in Tibetan
regions have been designated safe havens for wildlife by local custom or
religious law. We were told of an entire county in which hunting was
forbidden for all Tibetans by order of the local rinpoche. Far north
from Minya Konka, on the Sichuan-Gansu border, the monastery of Taksan
Lhamo and the busy town of Lamasu is backed by a mountain slope that is
uncharacteristically covered in dense fir forest. In fact, it was only
upon seeing this forest that we realized that the barren slopes of the
surrounding mountains were all the result of deforestation. The Taksan
Lhamo monastery is named for a tiger and a goddess whose spirits live in
a pair of caves on opposite sides of a clear mountain spring just below
the forested mountain. The tall fir trees where dozens of eagles roost
and the deeply shaded forest floor covered with moist moss and dotted
with edible mushrooms offer a sharp contrast to the dry, deforested
slopes of the surrounding ridges. This forest is living proof of the the
power of religious sanctions against tree cutting.
In the area around Minya Konka
serow are rarely hunted by Tibetans, for this animal is sacred to the
lord of the mountain. Every Tibetan hunter must fear retribution if he
kills one, for the lord of the mountain may then prevent the hunter's
yaks from breeding. With the effective enforcement of the mountain lord,
it would not be surprising if serow in this region are hunted less than
anywhere else. Serow are designated first-class protected by Chinese
law, but the law has few teeth in the remote areas where wildlife can
still be found.
These stories are not unique.
Zorgei's Tebu district is on the northern fringes of the plateau
marshland in the Min mountain range. Here is the last refuge of the
Sichuan spotted deer. The latest Chinese survey accounted for only 413
of this subspecies in 1987. Within the Tebu forest there is a 3832 meter
peak called Da-Au, also the name of the mountain god. Da-Au is believed
to have raised a sacred deer and no one in the area can hunt deer for
fear that the mountain god will vent his anger in the form of hail, bad
harvests and plagues on livestock. In 1965, the force of Chinese law was
added to this effective supernatural enforcement when the area was set
aside as the Tebu Natural Protected Area, a wildlife refuge of 230
square kilometers.
(Sichuan Fengwuzhi, 1985).
China currently has over 300
Natural Protected Areas. Unfortunately, only about 2% of China's total
land area is now included in reserves, far less than the United States.
Considering the extraordinary biological diversity of China, the
government has recognized the need for many more reserves and there are
plans to add another 200 by the end of the century. But protection of
reserves requires money, and China is not a wealthy nation. The local
people living around remote reserves are often the poorest of China's
population, and are often eager for more development and more ways to
earn a little cash. As road buildling continues and the isolation of
remote refuges falls away, market forces are likely to put more and more
pressure on Tibet's rare and endangered wildlife. Facing these growing
pressures and the limitations on their resources, conservationistsners
might do well to enlist the beliefs of traditional people in their
efforts to help people and the environment survive and prosper in a
rapidly changing world. The gods of the mountains and the lords of the
soil could be powerful allies for those fighting to save the unique wild
of Tibetan wildlife
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