Non-Timber Forest Products Exchange Programme India

24
May

Fulbright in the Himalayas

Seven months ago, I moved from Seattle to Dehradun to conduct research for a year on a Fulbright grant. I got settled into my new home and within the first month, I traveled to my study area in the Himalayan Mountains. After a five-hour drive that felt more like five hours on a roller coaster, we arrived at our basecamp in Maneri at an elevation of 1,150 m. If you’re anything like me, that last sentence made you imagine a remote and quiet basecamp nestled in the mountains, surrounded only by trees and the occasional sound of birds calling. Erase that image. Maneri is on the edge of Uttarkashi, a bustling city complete with the constant honking, crowded markets, and lazy cows that are found all over India.

These high elevation cities exemplify the close connection between human life and nature, which is the exact reason that I came to do research in India. The main goal of the Fulbright program is to promote mutual understanding, both in daily life and in the academic setting. My experiences in the United States showed me a world in which wildlife and humans live in separate worlds; wild animals are largely confined to national and state parks while humans remain in cities and towns. My experiences in India have shattered this assumption. I have seen some of the many ways in which humans and wildlife interact closely and the extent to which each impacts the lives of the other.

1Every day, as I interact with the people around me, I learn about Indian culture while they learn about U.S. culture. Similarly, as I study in the Himalayan Mountains, I learn about wildlife management and human-nature relationships in India as I share about livestock practices and wilderness areas in the U.S. Through this mutual sharing of information and knowledge, we can achieve mutual understanding and common ground.

After a few days of preparation in Maneri, we drove another two hours on the roller-coaster-roads to Harsil, the farthest we would get in a car. From there, I headed into the mountains with three other researchers, two cooks, and three porters. For 18 km we followed the Jalandri River – one of the many rivers that combine to make the Ganges River – up and into the mountains to find my study area. Kyarkoti, the name of my study area and my new office, is at an elevation of about 4,000 m and is absolutely stunning. I would say that the view took my breath away, but the elevation already did that…

So I was left completely breathless, standing deep in the Himalayas, staring at the lush meadows, jagged cliffs, and majestic peaks all around me, when I heard a distinct bleating sound. I wasn’t surprised when I turned to see a herd of about 800 sheep and goats grazing on a grassy hill nearby. A group of these livestock, the subjects of my research, was never far during the entirety of our trek.

These nomadic shepherds are practicing one of the oldest occupations in the world. In March and April, shepherds go from house to house in cities and towns near the mountains, collecting each family’s sheep or goats. Once they’ve accumulated a herd ranging from 200 to 1,000 individuals, they start their journey into the mountains. For the next eight months, they endure the heat, the cold, and the monsoon rains as they move the grazing livestock through the mountains. These nomadic shepherds return the livestock to their families in October and rest during the winter before starting the whole trip again the next spring.

While this type of nomadic herding is nowhere close to new, the number of livestock in the high elevation alpine meadows of the Himalayas is growing exponentially. This increased anthropogenic pressure is threatening the habitat of two other large herbivores; blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur) and musk deer (Moschus leucogaster). It is commonly accepted among the scientific communities that goats and sheep are competing with these wild herbivores, but few studies have explored how and to what extent they are competing. While the livestock, blue sheep, and musk deer are all technically considered generalist feeders because they eat a mixture of grasses and shrubs, musk deer tend to prefer shrubs and will choose lichen over grasses when food is scarce, and blue sheep prefer grasses but are flexible and often incorporate shrubs into their diet.

Musk deer are classified as endangered by the IUCN due to overexploitation; male musk deer are hunted and traded since the musk that they produce is used in the manufacture of perfumes and medicines. While blue sheep are classified as least concern by the IUCN, many studies have shown that they are the primary prey species of the endangered snow leopard, and that a drop in the number of blue sheep could have a significant negative affect on snow leopard populations. So, in order to protect these precious populations, it is important to determine what kind of competition livestock grazing is imposing on blue sheep and musk deer.

2I am honored to be helping answer this question. First, I assess plant availability in high elevation alpine meadows in my study area – only once we know what is available, can any data on diet composition be useful. Then, I collect samples of each plant species in my study area and samples of pellets from my three study species (livestock, blue sheep, and musk deer). By looking at the plants under a microscope, I can determine unique cellular characteristics of each plant species. For example, one plant species might have long, skinny cells with smooth cell walls, whereas another plant species might have round cells with undulating cell walls. Lastly, I look at the pellets under the microscope. There are clumps of cells left over in the pellets from the plants which the herbivores ingested, and I am able to identify which plant species each fragment belongs to, thus determining the diet composition of the herbivores.

Seven months into my project, I am just starting to get results, but I am confident that through continued hard work in the next few months, I will be able to contribute some knowledge about these wild animals that live in these high elevation alpine meadows. Since there are many socio-economic factors relating to these nomadic shepherds that I don’t know the details about, I will not be recommending any specific management practice. But I am honored to be able to help the forest officials and others who do make these crucial decisions.

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