by by Karma Singye*

05 September 1999

Bonn, Germany: Zang-mo, a member of the proud and colourful, semi-nomad community of Bhutan's Laya region, sits calm and resolute at the fringes of the camp, nursing her infant son, her seven-year-old boy and a younger girl by her side. The campground is on her Tsamdro, the ancestral pasturelands to which her yaks have official grazing rights.

Sensing the excitement the unexpected visitor has caused in the camp, she begins to stir. Then, evidently mistaking the intent, she rises quickly to her feet as one of the men in the camp fumbles in his bag, producing a large pair of binoculars. Raising her hands in protest, she shouts, "You cannot hunt here, this is the king's protected area!" As soon as the misunderstanding is cleared, she is delighted by the invitation to peer through the glasses herself. The animal she sees - a musk deer - stands poised like a statue, identifiable by its dark, compact body, tan-striped underbelly, and the twin fangs that curve down from its long snout, clearly visible even in the failing light.

We were in Jigme Dorji National Park, at 4,349 sq. kms, the largest such sanctuary in the kingdom. The headquarters of the park is a low rectangular building with neat, whitewashed walls - a wooden cabin-style sunroom with tall glass windows projecting from the main building - set in a soft hollow in the shadow of the beautiful and imposing Gasa Thongmey Dzong, historically an important religious and administrative centre in north-west Bhutan.

South of the slope the forests have the wet, life-drenched feel of a tropical rainforest, an image heightened by the constant orchestra of a myriad insects, a hundred different bird-calls, bubbling water, rushing streams and the large butterflies sporting all the colours of the rainbow that rock, careen and fall through the air like autumn leaves.

In the mountains that loom behind the Gasa Dzong, however, it is not the soft, bulbous trees of the rainforest but the sharp, jagged points of ancient pine, giant cedar and tall fir trees that define the landscape. Still further up are cold, windblown passes with nothing but rock and tundra, glacial moraines, ice, snow peaks and the dramatic geological variations in between. To date, 1,434 species of plants have been identified in the park - many of them rare medicinal herbs with high commercial value - 300 species of birds and at least 31 species of mammals, including several species that are rare or endangered elsewhere in the world.

Although aided by the Buddha's injunction against killing and respect for all forms of life, values that form the cornerstones of most Bhutanese lives, increasing exposure to the outside world and the highly lucrative trade in wildlife parts has made illegal trapping and poaching new concerns in the park, calling for increased vigilance.

Providing health, education, and other social services to remote communities scattered across the park demands innovative approaches. Enhancement of living standards could also fuel population growth and exert other pressures, straining the delicate balance between people, who have lived there for centuries, and the park, which is a relatively modern entity. Meanwhile, to prevent alienating the people, traditional uses of forest and parkland resources have to be maintained, and made sustainable, even as the economic aspirations of the people have to be recognized. To meet these complex challenges, the Bhutan Government has launched an Integrated Conservation and Development Programme (ICDP) that seeks to improve the living standard of local people, while also addressing the conservation needs of the national park.

"The next step is to develop what we call Community Natural Resources Management Plans (CNRMP) for each of the areas," says Tshering Phuntsho, park warden for the Gasa region. "These may include helping people earn extra income from activities like mushroom cultivation, the cultivation of high value medicinal plants, [ecologically sensitive] tourism, the development of pastures for their livestock. The basic idea is to reduce the consumption of natural resources from the wild."

Tshering Phuntsho says the park's management uses local decision-making bodies not only as forums to teach people about conservation, but also as a feedback mechanism to help the management understand the concerns of the people, their problems and their perception of conservation issues.

"Traditionally, the local people have seen park staff as the enforcers, as telling them what they can and cannot do. We want to change that," says UN Volunteer Roy Cameron (UK) who is working for the park's administration as natural resources manager. "We are now trying to encourage that trust between the local people and park staff." Forging such links between local government agencies and rural communities is a familiar concept for UNV social forester Hans Blom of the Netherlands, who is also working for the Jigme Dorji National Park. His first UNV assignment brought him to the Nepal Terai (1,400m to 2,500m) to help develop a programme focusing on what he calls a "Community Forestry Approach". The project helps teach rural Nepalese to manage their own forests in sustainable ways, redistribute wealth from the use of communal forests and natural resources more equitably, raise awareness of local environment issues and improvise strategies to reduce the high consumption of fuel wood.

*Karma Singye is a freelance writer and photographer.