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The Nature of Conservation: Conflict and Articulation
- University of Minnesota Press
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228 TheNatureof Conservation ConflictandArticulationin NorthernPakistan shafqat hussain since 1975, Shimshal, a small village of agro-pastoral people in Pakistan ’s mountainous Northern Areas (now Gilgit-Baltistan), has been embroiled in a conflict with the government Forest Department over the establishment of the Khunjerab National Park (KNP) on traditional grazing grounds. The park was established on the recommendation of the famous American naturalist George Schaller, who in the 1970s visited the region and saw the land use practices of the local people as a threat to Himalayan wildlife and nature. Schaller was especially concerned about the plight of wild sheep and goats, particularly ibex, blue sheep, and the fabled Marco Polo sheep, which he thought had come under threat from the local herders who hunted them and from their yaks, which competed for the grazing areas.The park put a total ban on Shimshalis’ use of the area for grazing their yaks, thus threatening their main economic activity. The people of Shimshal from the start refused to cooperate or give up any land to park management and continued to use the area for grazing . Between 1975 and 1989, the park was a park on paper only. In 1989, the newly opened country office of IUCN (The World Conservation Union) commissioned an international workshop to prepare a management plan for the park. The management plan that came out of the the nature of conservation 229 conference and its subsequent versions have all been rejected by the Shimshalis. To date, they remain at loggerheads with the government over the park, and they continue to graze their livestock in the area. This essay is based on ethnographic research that I conducted during 2005–2006. I will examine how the conflict is articulated both by the Pakistani state and the Shimshali people, and I will use this particular case to show what lies at the heart of such conflicts here and elsewhere. I argue that the heart of the problem is competing and often opposing visions of the landscape where the park is to be established. The idea of the KNP emerged from American ideas of wilderness, as I illustrate through analysis of Schaller’s writings, in which he presents landscape as part of pristine nature outside human history.This ideology contrasts with that of the Shimshalis, who view the KNP landscape as part of their economic and social history. These two visions have different implications for conservation policy as the former leads to the threat of or real dispossession and displacement of local people while the latter supports their continued presence and use. This conflict is articulated differently by the Pakistani state and the Shimshalis: the former has often expressed Shimshalis’ resistance to the park as antistate, and thus open to the possibility of meeting violence, while the latter sees the imposition of national park status on their land as a continuation of colonialism, thus tantamount to outright theft and deception. Given such an enormous gulf between how the park is seen by, and what it means to, the opposing parties it is unrealistic to expect that the conservation goals of the park will be met. Part I.The Heart of the Conflict Shimshalis’ Views of KNP Landscape The village of Shimshal is located in the northeastern part of upper Hunza region in northern Pakistan. The area is generally known as the roof of the world and is renowned for being the point at which the world’s mightiest mountain ranges meet. Shimshalis are Wakhispeaking people—Wakhi is an Indo Iranian language—who trace their origin to theWakhan region ofAfghanistan andTajikistan.They belong [54.90.167.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:05 GMT) 230 Shafqat Hussain to the minority Ismaili Muslim sect, following a progressive spiritual and religious leader, the Aga Khan. The total population of Shimshal is about 1,000 people. While crop production is an important element of Shimshali economic and cultural life, it is their livestock, mainly yaks, that are really central to their livelihood, with livestock products including meat, butter , cheese, hides, wool, and carpets all being key elements of Shimshali subsistence. Collectively Shimshalis own the largest herd of yak by a single community in the region, with numbers ranging close to 1,200. It is the Shimshalis’ vast high altitude summer pastures that enable them to keep such large numbers of yaks. The economic and material life of the pasture is the bedrock of the Shimshali symbolic and mythical universe. According...