April 2002: The Great Himalayan National Park lies in a relatively isolated part of the Kullu Valley, in Himachal Pradesh. It was established in 1984, following a survey conducted by an international team of scientists who judged that based on the relatively low human pressures in the area and the exceptional condition of the forests, this would probably be an ideal location for a national park being planned for the state. It is noted for having one of only two protected populations of the Western Tragopan (thought to number 1600 animals in the wild), amongst four other pheasant species, sizeable, contiguous populations of Himalayan Tahr and Blue Sheep , and an endangered population of musk deer.

At the same time, the GHNP is used by local communities for a variety of resources. Approximately 11,000 people live in a five-km wide belt, on the western side of the GHNP border. All families cultivate land, for the most part small parcels of land that provide subsistence for some portion of the year. The bulk of the population depends on a variety of additional resources to meet their annual income requirements, including the commercial grazing of sheep and goats, the extraction of medicinal herbs to be sold to a burgeoning pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry, and the collection of morel mushrooms, considered a delicacy in many parts of western Europe.

There is a temporal and spatial seasonality to this use of resources within the GHNP. The sheep and goats owned by individual families are entrusted to the care of 2-3 professional herders from each village in April. These herders will care for these animals for the next six months, gradually moving them up to the alpine meadows at high altitude, where they spend 3 months, before retracing their steps and bringing the animals down to lower altitudes, where the owners care for the animals during the winter. The animals from each village are grazed in specific, clearly defined grazing runs, based on customary rights that have been worked out over the course of many decades. The wool of the animals tends to be used to meet the family requirements, while the occasional animal is sold as meat on the hoof, eventually ending up in the meat shops up and down the Kullu Valley.

Equally seasonal is the collection of morel mushrooms, which grow at the lower reaches of the GHNP forests and in the forests outside the park. The mushrooms are collected during April or early May, depending on the amount of snow that falls in the winter as well as the timing of the snowmelt. Because of the ease of accessibility of the mushrooms, all members of a family may go on collection trips. The mushroom is dried in the village, and eventually sold to local traders in the small towns of the region or to traders in the bigger towns in the Kullu Valley - Aut, Bhuntar and Kullu. In the past, gucchi, as it is commonly known, has sold for as much as Rs. 4,000 ($85.00) a kg, a lot of money considering the meager income generating activities in the region.

The collection of medicinal herbs is also highly lucrative. For the most part, these herbs are extracted from the high altitudes, in the alpine meadows above 12,000 feet and higher. It is hard work, and tends to be undertaken by the young men of the village, who might end up spending a week or more collecting herbs before descending to their villages. The collection appears to take place at various points during the summer, but it is generally accepted that collecting plants after August the 15th is probably best, seeing as the plants have set seed by this time, thereby diminishing the possibility of over-harvesting these plants. The combination of guchhi and medicinal herb sales contributes an average income over Rs. 10,000 per family in villages around the park (Tandon 1997). It is likely that the reduced access to park resources is particularly important for the poorest sections of the populace, a point that is emphasized by Baviskar (in press), although there is little data to suggest caste, class or gender differentiated use of park resources.

Biologists and officials of the Forest Department have for long considered these activities to pose a serious threat to the biological diversity of the region. The presence of herders with their sheep is considered responsible for overgrazing the meadows, and at its worst is assumed to be responsible for large scale soil erosion. Their movement through the forests, while on the spring migration up to the alpine meadows, is considered to be responsible for disturbing the Western Tragopan when it is nesting. Gucchi collection also takes place at a time that the Tragopan is nesting, and the hordes of people who comb the forest floor looking for gucchi are responsible, once more, for disturbing the nesting birds. The dogs that accompany gucchi collectors are thought to chase the Western Tragopans, and the dogs with the herders are seen as hunting wild animals such as musk deer. Both herders and medicinal herb collectors are seen as laying huge numbers of snares in the hope of catching musk deers, largely owing to the presence of the musk pod, at one point considered to be worth more than its weight in gold. And the medicinal herb extraction is seen as having escalated over the past few years, to a point where some of the species are, ostensibly, on the decline, far less visible, and smaller in size than just a few years ago (DeCoursey 1997; Sharma 1997; Vinod and Satyakumar 1999; Singh and Rawat 1999; Ramesh, Sathyakumar and Rawat 2000).

The scientific evidence in support of these arguments is tenuous at best. Over the past five years, a series of long-term studies have been conducted by the Wildlife Institute of India (the work referred to in the previous paragraph). Their conclusions, outlined above, are however, generally unwarranted, failing to establish a decline in the first place, but also owing to poorly designed frameworks, lacking any real capability for examining the relationship between human activities and biological resources in the park. At its worst, the report mis-interprets its own data in arguing that human activities have a negative impact on wildlife resources within the park. To illustrate this last, most damning claim, we present the following data from Vinod and Sathyakumar (1999), a study that was primarily documenting ungulate distribution and density patterns for the park, but which also undertook an exploration of differences in density and use as a function of human disturbance. In order to do this, they picked four transect lines, two each in disturbed and undisturbed parts of the park. Along these transects they recorded animal sightings as well as pellet (dropping) groups, the latter an indirect indication of use of the area by animals. The results are presented in tables 1 and 2.

A key argument presented by the authors is that goral and other ungulates are present in fewer numbers in the more disturbed areas. Yet the data does not support such a position. While the Kharoncha-Rolla (KHRO) transect had far lower sightings of goral, than the other three transects - Rolla-Shilt (ROSH), Chalocha-Nada (CLNA) and Rolla-Basu (ROBA) - there is little to choose from amongst these latter three in terms of either numbers of animals sighted or pellet groups counted. And, yet as far as the study design is concerned, both the KHRO and the ROSH transects are listed as disturbed, the other two as not disturbed. Given that one of the disturbed transects had numbers identical to the undisturbed the suggested relationship between disturbance and goral densities is unwarranted. On the other hand, one of the most carefully conducted studies of the WII (Mathur and Mehra 1999, see also Mehra and Mathur, this issue), suggests that at the level of the landscape, there is in fact little evidence to suggest a negative impact by grazing on the park's vegetation.

While some villagers acknowledge that certain species of medicinal herbs may in fact be on the decline, the position is hotly contested. Certainly on the question of grazing impacts on forests and meadows, there is little sympathy with the position taken by the forest department. With regard to the medicinal herbs, the argument is that some of the most intensively used herbs are root-propagating, and it is almost impossible to actually eliminate the root stock. Other species are seed propagating, and where herb collection takes place after August 15, following seed set, over-harvesting of these species is biologically impossible. There are mixed responses to the allegations that gucchi collection is responsible for disturbing the Western Tragopan at a crucial juncture of its breeding biology or to the fact that shepherds and herb collectors lay snares to catch musk deer.

The point for most villagers is that the value that is today placed on the national park cannot be disassociated from the history of use of the area. Many claim that the villagers need to be credited with having taken good care of the park, which is why it is in the good condition it is in today. They would argue that it is not despite their presence in the park, it is because of their seasonal presence that the animal, bird and plant populations have flourished. To support such a claim, they argue that certain medicinal plants need to be harvested on a regular basis to prevent them from rotting. As is pointed out above, it is now accepted within parts of the scientific community that moderate levels of grazing are necessary to sustain high levels of diversity within grasslands the world over. And villagers argue that because of their presence in the park, they provide the ears and eyes that guard against the intrusion of outsiders interested in hunting. It is because of their alertness that forest fires have been put out in the past. They argue that were their access to the park to be curtailed, there would be a deterioration in the condition of resources in the park.

In 1999, fifteen years after the park was first formally demarcated, the Himachal government issued the final notification for the park. The trigger for this sudden move appears, at least on the surface, to be the directive passed by the Supreme Court in 1996, requiring all state governments to complete, within the year, all legal requirements to bring protected areas in compliance with the requirements of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act. The act prohibits all human activities within a National Park, and only those activities within a wildlife sanctuary which, in the opinion of the Chief Wildlife Warden, are in the interests of the region's wildlife. Recognizing that many protected areas in India are used by people, who have demonstrable statutory and customary rights to biological resources, the Act requires the state government to settle or acquire these rights prior to finally notifiying the park. This happens either through the payment of monetary compensation, or through the provision of alternative areas within which such rights can be exercised. The settlement of rights in the GHNP took place on the basis of the Anderson settlement, written in the late nineteenth century (Anderson 1894). Based on names of families listed in that settlement, a total of 314 families were granted monetary compensation. Claims of long-standing customary usage of grazing meadows by the remainder of the population were dealt with the reassurance that alternative areas would be provided to people to graze their goat and sheep. Since the collection of Gucchi was not listed in Anderson's settlement (presumably owing to the fact that demand from European palates had yet to materialize in the late nineteenth century), no compensation was provided for this loss of revenue. Nor were the vast majority compensated or provided alternative extraction areas for their loss of access to herb producing alpine meadows in the park.

There is considerable resentment within the affected population. While there is wide variation in the predicted income generated from families in the area, it is clear that some portion of the community is heavily dependent upon medicinal herbs, gucchi and sheep and goat grazing to meet their annual income requirements. Going by a study by Vinay Tandon, Chief Conservator of Forests, on average in 1997 a family made close to 10,000 rupees annually from gucchi and medicinal herb collection (Tandon 1997), with sheep and goat rearing bringing in some more in terms of both money and wool. 80 % of the population, according to Tandon, spent time looking for herbs and gucchi. A study with Virender Sharma suggests a lower proportion of families (20%) looking for these plants, but similarly high level of returns (Sharma 1997). And in talks with villagers, most indicated that given the lack of any kind of industry in the region, with neither apples nor tourism having the sort of presence they have in the main Kullu Valley, a denial of access to park resources could represent a serious financial blow to the bulk of the population.

That quite considerable amounts of gucchi and medicinal herbs are being extracted from the region is borne out in discussions with traders who handle these products. They point out that certain items such as mehandi and dhoop are removed from the area by the truckloads. Others leave in the hundreds of kilos. While such numbers are in themselves worrying owing to the magnitude of the trade that is above ground (there is reportedly a large and growing underground trade as well), it is also indicative of the large amount of money that is made from these resources. The attempt to deny people the opportunity to make this money has not gone down well with villagers, and they have used various means to circumvent the law. More on this later.

Much before the final settlement took place, there had been an earlier, more circuitous attempt to reduce human pressures on the park. Faced by mounting criticism of an exclusionary policy that forced people from their homes, conservation organizations the world over had come up with a number of variants on the same theme - local communities needed to be provided a stake in the conservation process if it were to have any chance of success. In India this took the form of eco-development. The logic of eco-development was that through a variety of development initiatives, local communities would be provided alternative means of livelihood, thereby reducing their dependence on resources within protected areas. This was to be tried out in seven national parks in the country, with support from the Global Environment Fund (GEF). But before that, the World Bank provided funds for two pilot studies - one in GHNP the other in the Kalakaad Mundantarai Tiger Reserve (KMTR).

Eco-development came to GHNP in 1994. Over the course of the next five years, approximately 7 crore rupees (a crore = 10 million) was spent as part of eco-development, research and management in GHNP - all part of a loan from the World Bank. Since eco-development was to take place for the people, and required their cooperation, eco-development committees were formed in a number of panchayats. Expenditures on development were to be coordinated through these committees. Confronted with the need to form eco-development committees, most forest guards simply went along with membership they were presented with. Invariably, it was the more powerful people in the village who became members of this committee. In numerous cases, there was overlap in the membership to the eco-development committees and that of the Devta (or deity) committees. Eventually, upper caste men comprised the bulk of those present on these committees (Baviskar in press).

Most villagers are unhappy with the way funds have been spent in the villages. Temples have been repaired in many villages, testimony to the presence of devta committee members on the eco-development committee. Funds were also spent on the building of bridal paths, some water holding tanks, and rain-shelters. Close to 70% of the total eco-development funds were eventually spent on civil works of this kind. Needless to say, such construction has had little impact on the income generating capabilities within any village, and pressures on park resources have in no way diminished, the key objective of the eco-development project in the first place.

There are reports of rampant corruption in the civil works that were commissioned by the Forest Department, undertaken both for eco-development and for improved park management. In the case of the latter one comes across watch towers, rest houses, and guard huts - some built just over a year ago. The quality of the construction material used has been so bad that many of these structures, including a large rest house in Kharoncha, have cracks that are six inches across. They haven't been used to date, and nothing indicates they will be used in the future.

But corruption is not new to the bureaucracy, and this could surely have been anticipated. Perhaps of greater interest is the attempt to bring 'development' to the doorsteps of the park, with the explicit intent to reduce human pressures on the park. As Baviskar (in press) points out, the Forest Department is not trained to do development work, and it should come as no surprise that little came of its efforts.

But there are at least two additional dimensions to the GHNP story. The first is the building of a hydel-power project in a portion of what was formerly part of the park. To enable the Parvati Hydel Power Project to come up in the Jeeva Nallah, a project that had been pending with the government for a number of years, the requisite portion of the Jeeva Nallah was deleted from the original demarcation of the park boundaries. The final settlement that was conducted in 1999 appears to have been timed to enable this deletion - justified by the Chief Wildlife Warden on the grounds that the area was ecologically insignificant. An argument was also made that this deletion of the park would ensure that the residents of the villages of Kundher and Majhan would not be forced to move (since human habitation within the park was prohibited following the final notification). And yet, surveys by wildlife biologists had indicated that the area between Gatipath and Kundher village, part of the area that was denotified, had some of the finest bamboo forest and was ideal habitat for the Western Tragopan. And in any case, all but one family from these two villages had long since moved lower down the Jeeva Nallah, in response to persistent attempts by the Forest Department to move them out of the park, over two decades ago. All that remains of these two villages are abandoned houses, many with trees growing out of them.

An area of 10 square km was deleted from the original demarcation of the GHNP - not a huge area in itself. And because this is a run of the river project, there will not, in fact, be a great deal of destruction or displacement resulting from the damning of the Jeeva Nallah. The area was deleted, primarily to allow the building of a wide road which will go to the site where a relatively small dam will be built, high up on the Jeeva Nallah. But for the building of this road, and eventually the building of the dam itself, a labor force of 5-6,000 people, three times that of the current population, will (and has) settled in Sainj Town. As was demonstrated with the Pandoh dam lower down the Kullu Valley, the influx of so many people is likely to lead to rapid deforestation of adjoining slopes, entirely a function of meeting the fuel needs of this huge labor force.

As a result of the building of the road and the dam, the forests around the town of Sainj will almost certainly be destroyed. The building of the road on numerous steep sections of the Jeeva Nallah will almost certainly destabilize the mountainside. And, from the biological diversity perspective, the Western Tragopan and Chir populations that used the area between Gaatipaath and Kunder will need to move elsewhere. What comes through most vividly in the settlement order passed by the Kullu district commissioner is the double standard of a developmentalist state. While local livelihoods can be sacrified for the sake of biological diversity, biological diversity must make way for national development.

A final component of the story remains untold. When in June of 1999, the District Commissioner announced the ban on villager entry into the national park, there was incredulity and some feeble protests. Then the opposition Congress party got into the act, and began to have rallies in the villages around the park, commenting on the anti-people attitudes of the party in power, the BJP. With national elections two months away, the Congress used the situation to extract maximum electoral mileage. Forced on the defensive, the Member of Parliament from the Kullu constituency, Thakur Maheshwar Singh called up the District Commissioner and instructed him to allow people back into the park. This was done through an entirely illegal order issued by the DC, in the name of the park director, and circulated within all affected villages. Maheshwar Singh had saved his political life, and people were back in the park as usual.

The following year, panchayat elections were to be held in December. With the park director taking a tough stance, and asserting he would not allow people into the park (herbs collected by a group of villagers were confiscated, along with pots and pans they had used while in the park), Maheshwar Singh had no choice but to intervene once more. This time he sent his brother on a tour of the villages, the park director in tow. Sanjeeva Pandey was forced to tell people they would be allowed to enter the park, but that he hoped they would not go in until the middle of August - the date by which seed set normally takes place.

CONFLICTING CLAIMS | The GHNP | POLITICS and DEVELOPMENT | REFERENCES

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