Himalaya Bound Read online

  Van Gujjars see themselves as similarly woven into the fabric of their forest world—though with one very unique difference. While the Maasai think of their livestock as domesticated animals, Van Gujjars think of their buffaloes as “jungle animals,” little different from other wildlife. In fact, the breed of buffalo that Van Gujjars keep is genetically very close to the breed of wild buffalo that once roamed the Shivaliks, and has substantially different characteristics from the domesticated buffaloes raised elsewhere around India; not only do they thrive in the forest, they are able to climb into the Himalayas. When I showed a Maldhari tribesman from Gujarat photos of Van Gujjar buffaloes migrating into the mountains, he was astonished. “Our buffaloes could never do that,” he pronounced. “They would die.”

  One reason why Van Gujjars don’t kill predators such as leopards or tigers is that their buffaloes are quite good at defending themselves. But another reason is that, since the herds are thought of as wildlife themselves, Van Gujjars understand that it’s only natural for leopards and tigers to eat them. Though the loss of any buffalo deeply saddens the family that owns it, they don’t blame the predator, but accept it as fate, as the way of the forest. And Van Gujjars have deep empathy for the forest creatures. “The animal [in the forest] is seen through the eyes of the lover,” one Van Gujjar song goes. “He understands that his life and my life are the same.”

  In recent years, a growing number of conservationists have come to see the value in the indigenous point of view. They agree that, on the whole, indigenous people have done a pretty good job of living in nature without destroying it, whatever their motives may be. They’re open to the possibility of creating protected areas in which people can stay on their traditional lands—partly because they factor the ethics of eviction into their arithmetic, partly because they’ve come to appreciate the vast amount of knowledge that indigenous cultures have about the ecosystems in which they live, and partly because they reckon it’ll actually be better for the environment if people remain within it, where they are a deterrent to poachers and where they’ll continue to have a very personal reason to care for the land.

  The reason, of course, that these cultures tend to live sustainably is because they know that they’re going to be relying on the environment and its plant and animal communities for their own survival, year after year, generation after generation. As a result, they’re willing to harvest, graze, or hunt less than they otherwise might, to make sure there is enough for the future, the way Van Gujjars traditionally prune trees in a way that they’ll be sure to regenerate.

  When faced with eviction, this equation is fundamentally altered. Suddenly, there is no future. It makes sense to take much more from the land than usual, since it’s now or never, and if the balance of the ecosystem is thrown off they won’t be there to feel it. This is what happened in some parts of Rajaji when the Van Gujjars felt sure they were going to be kicked out of the forest. And I’ve seen it happen in other places, too.

  In 2011, I spent some time in Jordan, around the village of Dana—a tiny settlement of stone houses perched on the edge of a dramatic canyon that plunges about five thousand feet in elevation, through four different climatic zones. For over five hundred years, the Bedouin of the Al Ata’ta tribe used the village as a home base during the summer months; in winter they would descend into the warmer, lower elevations of the canyon system to graze their herds of goats, sheep and camels.

  In 1993, the Dana Biosphere Reserve was created, covering about 125 square miles around the village and including much of the land on which the Al Ata’ta relied for grazing.

  When I met Hamed Abu Saygir, a Bedouin park ranger who was one of the few shepherds who’d gotten a good job in the nature reserve, I expected him to rave about the success of the conservation efforts in Dana. Instead, he confessed that the land had been healthier when people had lived and grazed their animals on it. Sheep and goats, he said, used to eat the weeds that took over other, slower-growing types of plants, including wild herbs and pistachios. They also devoured insects that infested and killed trees. Since the grazing had stopped, the plant life wasn’t as robust or diverse as it had been. But perhaps the biggest impact had come from the change in local people’s attitudes about the environment.

  In the old days, he said, there was a strict taboo against killing trees. “We wanted the trees to live,” he explained. “This is the desert, and we needed their shade for ourselves and our animals. Even if we needed wood, we would never take down a whole tree.” Now that families hadn’t lived in the reserve for nearly twenty years, the fate of the trees didn’t concern them much. Wood poaching in the park was a serious problem, with trunks cut down to stumps, depleting the delicate high desert ecosystem. “We have forgotten that trees are a gift from Allah,” Hamed said.

  Hamed was not alone; every single person I talked to said that the environment (not to mention the herding families) had suffered since the shepherds had been shut out.

  Still, despite the degradation that had occurred, it was better that the area had been turned into a park than left completely unprotected, said Khalid Khawaldeh, another local Bedouin. Otherwise, much of it would have been destroyed by mining companies. It just would have been best, he maintained, if the shepherds were allowed to access the land within the reserve as they had for centuries past, rather than being oppressed by it. Due to the loss of their traditional grazing rights, many families had had to abandon herding altogether; those who kept their herds grappled daily with poverty and stress.

  Of course, even if it’s accepted that forest-dwelling people have long lived sustainably on their ancestral lands, it’s legitimate—and important—to ask whether they still can, today and into the future. Though no fault of their own, the modern world around them is weighing so heavily on the environment that their traditional ways of living, which were once easily absorbed by natural ecosystems, might now be the feather on the scales that knocks these ecosystems out of balance. In other words, due to the impact of climate change, industrial and agricultural encroachment, mineral extraction, legal and illegal logging, poaching, global population growth, urban sprawl, a shrinking base of natural resources, and other factors far beyond the control of indigenous people, it’s possible that some age-old techniques of living on the land that were once sustainable no longer are, or will lead to the extinction of some species. As habitat has disappeared, as tribal communities and wildlife are restricted to smaller—sometimes island-like—areas of wilderness, can people who have been living in harmony with nature for hundreds or thousands of years continue to do so? Might their presence crash—or help preserve—the ecosystems they rely on for survival?

  These questions can really only be answered on a case-by-case basis, depending on local environmental conditions as well as the specific ways of life of any particular group of people.

  The Van Gujjars who spend summers in Govind National Park practice seasonal, rotational grazing, which is generally regarded to be environmentally responsible, and often beneficial, to meadow and grassland ecosystems. Since seasonal herders only spend part of the year in any one place, the land has a chance to regenerate when they’re gone, helped by the animal dung left behind, which acts as a fertilizer and seed-scatterer. In studies from around the world, this kind of grazing has been shown to keep aggressive plant species in check, allowing a wider variety of life to flourish and keeping biodiversity in balance. Despite this knowledge, it’s not unusual for grazing to be forbidden in the name of conservation. Of many examples, I’ll give you two.

  The shallow wetlands of Rajasthan’s Keoladeo National Park are the winter home to tens of thousands of birds—including critically endangered Siberian Cranes—and are a monsoon-season breeding ground for flocks of herons, storks, ibises and egrets. Local herders used to graze their buffaloes there, but once the area became a national park they were banned. With the cattle gone, grasses grew wildly, choking the marshes and seriously degrading the quality of the habitat for bir
ds. Park authorities then had to engage in perpetual grass removal efforts—which were once handled naturally by the buffaloes. Clearly, the buffaloes had contributed greatly to the creation of an ecosystem that was perfect avian habitat.

  Much closer to Govind, in the Himalayas of Uttarakhand, sits the famed Valley of Flowers National Park, once home to 520 plant species. A number of studies have shown that the eviction of the Bhotia people, who spent summers in the meadows there with their herds of sheep and goats, led to the rapid spread of knotweed, which grazing had previously kept under control. To deal with the problem, attempts were made to eradicate the knotweed by hand, which then led to an opportunistic takeover of the land by Gigantic Himalayan Balsam, the pinkish-purplish flower that carpets the valley during monsoon. While the Bhotias were there, none of these problems existed. The valley then was healthier and more botanically diverse than it is now.

  By analogy, it seems quite possible that the Van Gujjars and their herds might be playing a similarly useful role in the meadows of Govind, and that their eviction could have similarly unintended environmental consequences.

  Official reports on Govind, prepared by the state of Uttarakhand in 2009, say that human pressure on the park needs to be “urgently reduced” or it is “bound to suffer irreversible ecological damage.” In assessing the threats described in the report, however, it’s hard to distinguish how much of the impact is caused by the Van Gujjars and how much is caused by the year-round residents of the forty-two villages that abut and “fragment” the park. The loss of forested land seems mostly attributable to the villagers, who build wooden houses and granaries, cook over wood, and heat with wood throughout the frigid winter. But the report also says that the presence of livestock prevents the trees from growing back—which seems to point the finger at the nomads. At least until you do the math.

  According to the report, an estimated 150,000 sheep and goats, plus another 70,000 head of “cattle, mules and horses belonging to the local inhabitants as well as migratory pastoral communities graze” in the park in the summer. Very few Van Gujjar families keep sheep and goats, so nearly all of those probably belong to the villagers. As far as the larger livestock is concerned, if there are a hundred nomadic families that use the park (as the report claims) and each family has fifty animals—which is more than Dhumman, Yusuf, or Alfa had, and would be far above average—that would total just 5,000 animals in Van Gujjar hands. And that’s surely an overestimate. So, either about 65,000 cattle, mules and horses—plus virtually all of the sheep and goats—belong to the families of forty-two mountain villages, who would be responsible for the vast majority of any environmental damage due to grazing—or the figures in the report are less than accurate. And if the figures are off, it’s more difficult to trust the conclusions that are based on them. (From what I knew about the veracity of some of the reports written about Rajaji, in which areas were cleared of Van Gujjars on paper, but not on the ground, I had reason to question the numbers.)

  I spoke with one of the authors of the Govind report—Dr. G.S. Rawat, a prominent biologist at the Wildlife Institute of India—in June 2009. He sympathized with the Van Gujjars, speaking about them as good, honest people, and acknowledging that they had nothing to do with wildlife poaching. Rawat was also the only contributor to the report who suggested compensating the nomads to settle their land rights claims, rather than just banning them from the park. Yet he had no doubts that the buffaloes were hurting the ecosystem and diminishing fragile wildlife habitat. Even more than grazing, he said, the biggest problem was that they trampled seedlings to death with their heavy hooves. And he noted that since families and herds had grown, there were more nomads bringing more livestock up to the meadows than ever before. Rawat said that their increasing numbers had made the Van Gujjars’ use of Govind’s bugyals (meadows) unsustainable; they had to go.

  But I also spoke with Nabi Jha, a scientist and former research fellow at the G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development who specializes in mountain grasslands ecology. He believes that seasonal rotational grazing is good for mountain meadows, and he firmly opposes the plan to evict the Van Gujjars from Govind, at least at this time. No one, he said, had ever determined the environmental impact of the nomads’ herds, or how many animals the meadows in the park could sustainably support. “We need to measure the land’s carrying capacity against the buffaloes’ demands before we’ll know if there’s any reason to ban Van Gujjars or limit their numbers,” he said.

  Thinking logically, Rawat’s point about the dangers of expanding herds can’t be ignored. With ever-increasing numbers of buffaloes, one must conclude that at some point they will reach critical mass, surpassing the land’s carrying capacity, both in the high meadows and in the forests of the Shivalik Hills. But, as Nabi Jha notes, no one knows whether that has happened yet or how soon that will occur. And it’s possible that there are solutions yet to be considered that can protect wildlife habitat without the wholesale, unilateral eviction of the Van Gujjars, especially since they are only one of many factors impacting the ecosystems in which they live.

  In fact, when I recently spoke with Rawat again, in November 2014 (over five years after our first conversation) his opinion had shifted and was more attuned with Jha’s. He said that more study was necessary before any intelligent policy could be developed, for the very same reasons that Jha cited. And he stepped away from his previous assertion that the Van Gujjars should be removed from the park; instead, he suggested some kind of involvement by or assistance from the state, perhaps supplying the nomads with a certain amount of free fodder to mitigate their needs, or maybe expanding the territories on which they are allowed to graze, to dilute the intensity of their impact.

  When I asked him about the number of livestock that the 2009 report estimated were grazing in Govind, he said he had no idea how accurate those figures were, since they were provided by the forest department. He agreed that if those numbers were even close to correct, then the Van Gujjars’ buffaloes would be only a “small fraction’ of the total, and that their removal alone would not greatly reduce the threats to the park’s wildlife habitat.

  Manto didn’t think that defending the environment had much at all to do with why the park authorities wanted the Van Gujjars out. “These guys are full of themselves,” he told me in Dehradun in 2009. “They see the parks as their own private fiefdoms and want to show them off to other officials and foreign tourists, and they don’t want a bunch of poor herders around spoiling the view.” It had a familiar ring to it: Who would visit Yellowstone if Shoshone hunting parties were roaming around and camping along its rivers? And what tourists to the Masai Mara wanted to see tribespeople and cows sharing the savannah with the wildlife?

  Still, as I tried to grasp the truth of the situation, to understand from as impartial a perspective as possible what kind of threat the Van Gujjars actually posed to the forests and meadows of Govind National Park, it was difficult to know exactly what—or who—to believe.

  On the other hand, it was viscerally clear how being banned from the park would threaten the families that called it home.

  Inside Director Rasaily’s office, Dhumman and the other lambardars didn’t present the forest department honchos with philosophical or scientific arguments about the eco-sustainable traditional practices of the Van Gujjars or indigenous peoples in general. They let Manto make the case that blocking the Van Gujjars would violate the Forest Rights Act, while they themselves simply asked for mercy for their families.

  When they emerged, the Van Gujjars who’d been waiting outside crowded around to hear the news. It wasn’t good. Dhumman, with an expression at once pained and almost amused, as though the absurdity of the situation was nearly laughable but not quite, calmly explained the results of the meeting. Rasaily offered them nothing. The gates of Govind hadn’t budged an inch. Beyond Rasaily’s adherence to the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972—which should have been superseded by the Forest Rights Act—the mai
n sticking point seemed to be the director’s assertion that since the families migrating to Govind wintered in U.P., they had no right to use the resources of Uttarakhand.

  It was a disappointing blow, but not entirely unexpected. Upon receiving the decision, there was no shouting, there were no angry threats, and there was no violence. The Van Gujjars simply walked away, out to the main road, and were shuttled to the RLEK office for lunch, since the SOPHIA office was much too small.

  I began to follow along, but Manto told me that Director Rasaily wanted to meet me. It seemed a bit strange, but Manto said, “Just go in and say hi. It’ll only take a minute. I’ll wait out here, then we’ll head to RLEK together.” I walked towards the office, glad to have this unexpected chance to talk to the man who had pledged to keep the Van Gujjars out of Govind and who, with a word, could allow them in. Though of course I sympathized with the Van Gujjars, I had wondered if maybe Rasaily was simply a staunch advocate for the environment who truly believed that the buffalo herders would destroy precious wildlife habitat if they remained in the parks. Perhaps the disagreement over the rights of the nomads to access their meadows was an honest difference of opinion between a man who prioritized conservation over all else, and the people who would be hurt by his decisions.

  Rasaily, standing behind his desk, welcomed me in, shook my hand, and offered me a seat facing his, with the desk between us. He looked at me over the top of a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that were perched on the tip of his nose. The front half of his head was bald, while the back half was covered with short graying hair. His skin was cappuccino-colored, and he had a faint gray moustache. To the left of the desk stood a bookcase filled with titles such as Saving Wild Lands and The Wildlife of India. There were twelve other men in the room, wearing uniforms with stars on their lapels, looking dour. They sat behind and to the side of me.