Hunting of Large Mammals and Pheasants in the Indian Western Himalaya
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Oryx Vol 38 No 4 October 2004 Hunting of large mammals and pheasants in the Indian western Himalaya Rahul Kaul, Hilaluddin, J.S. Jandrotia and Philip J.K. McGowan Abstract We conducted a survey in the western impact of removal on wild populations is not clear. The Himalaya of India to assess animal extraction patterns. main reason for hunting was to supplement animal Data on animal species and their extraction patterns, protein, although some animals were also killed for sale their importance to the respondents, and reasons and of meat and their parts. The establishment of community- methods of hunting were collected using structured managed forests has not had an impact on extraction questionnaires. Twenty-three species of large mammals rates. Assessment of the impact of hunting on the and Galliformes were present in the area, 18 of which threatened species in particular is urgently required. were hunted around at least one village. Of special con- cern were several threatened species that were hunted Keywords Bushmeat, Galliformes, hunting, India, around most villages were they occurred, although the mammals, pheasants, western Himalaya, wildmeat. Introduction Much of the Himalayas fall within India, which forms 2.4% of the earth’s landmass and supports 16% of the Overhunting is considered the second most common world’s human population (Anon., 2000). Nineteen cause of recent animal extinctions after habitat destruc- percent of its landmass is under forest (Anon., 1999), but tion (Diamond & Case, 1986; Reid, 1992) and is similarly because of the extremely dense human population (0.07 considered to lie only behind habitat destruction and hectare per capita) few areas remain inviolate. degradation in current assessments of pressures likely to Legally, species are protected from hunting and trade lead to future species extinctions (Hilton-Taylor, 2000; through the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972. Neverthe- BirdLife International, 2004). To date most conservation less, hunting in the Himalaya, which has traditionally interest has concentrated on documenting and analysing been for subsistence and/or trade, continues. Although patterns of extraction of large tropical forest species this legislation has apparently succeeded in curbing (Peres & Terborgh, 1995; Alvard et al., 1997; Bodmer et al., some open trade of animals and their parts, subsistence 1997; Wilkie & Carpenter, 1999; Robinson & Bennett, hunting continues at an unknown scale. Therefore, we 2000; Bakarr et al., 2001). There is little information on undertook a survey to assess whether the extraction extraction levels and patterns in some other terrestrial of wildmeat was a conservation problem in part of the regions of the world, and such information is increas- western Himalaya. Specifically we sought to determine ingly important in those areas where habitat loss is (1) the prevalence of hunting, the species hunted and leading to decreasing populations of species that are the quantity extracted, (2) the reasons why people hunt, increasingly fragmented. One such area is the and (3) whether hunting pressure varied between Himalayas, which is of global importance for the con- servation of biological diversity (ICBP, 1992; Olson & community- and state-managed forests. Dinerstein, 1998) and that contains many threatened species (IUCN, 2003). Study area The study was conducted during 2002 in one district of Rahul Kaul (Corresponding author) and Hilaluddin World Pheasant Himachal Pradesh and five districts of the adjacent hill Association, South Asia Field Office, K-5 (First floor), Green Park, state of Uttaranchal over 1,100–3,000 m altitude. These New Delhi - 16, India. E-mail [email protected] areas fall within India’s biogeographic province 2B J.S. Jandrotia District Institute of Education and Training, Chamba, Western Himalaya (Rodgers & Panwar, 1988) and forms Himachal Pradesh, India. part of the Western Himalaya Endemic Bird Area Philip J.K. McGowan World Pheasant Association, 7-9 Shaftesbury Street, (ICBP, 1992; Stattersfield et al., 1998). Within this area, 21 Fordingbridge, Hampshire, SP6 1RF, UK. villages or hamlets were surveyed from the outer, middle Received 30 June 2003. Revision requested 24 March 2004. and inner Himalayan ranges, thereby covering most Accepted 3 June 2004. forest types occurring in the western Indian Himalaya. 426 © 2004 FFI, Oryx, 38(4), 426–431 DOI: 10.1017/S0030605304000808 Printed in the United Kingdom Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 27 Sep 2021 at 12:14:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605304000808 Hunting in the western Himalaya 427 Eight of these villages were in Himachal Pradesh and 13 community-managed forest areas in Himachal Pradesh. in Uttaranchal. Each village was assigned to one category or the other. Differences in harvesting were compared using Mann- Whitney U tests. Methods Data were collected through Rapid Rural Appraisal Results structured interviews (Sethi & Hilaluddin, 2001) with inhabitants of villages, some of whom hunted and some Only 8–10% of people in a village hunted, but other of whom did not. Our sampling was framed within social villagers shared the meat obtained by them. Hunting was and cultural constraints inasmuch as it was not always exclusively carried out with guns in Himachal Pradesh, possible to randomly select people for interview because whereas hunters in Uttaranchal used either guns (42%) or some village groups were busier than others during the snares (48%) only, or both (10%). study period and because females were shy and reluctant Twenty-three species of large mammal and Galli- to answer questions. formes were found around at least some of the villages In each village or hamlet one interview was conducted that we surveyed; 13 of these were mammals and 10 to obtain general information on the species hunted were pheasants, partridges and quail (Table 1). Of these, and the extent of hunting. During these interviews, five species (quail Perdicula sp., sambar Cervus unicolor, households that were reportedly engaged in hunting Himalayan langur Presbytis entellus, rhesus macaque were identified for further interviews. At least 5% of Macaca mulata and serow Capricornis sumatrensis) were such households in each village or hamlet were sampled. not hunted at all, and the common hill-partridge only Seventy-five such household-level interviews (19 in around one village. Seven species were hunted by Himachal Pradesh and 56 in Uttaranchal) were con- hunters in at least 60% of the villages around which ducted in all. However, amongst these, 32% of respon- they were found, with Himalayan tahr Hemitragus dents did not admit to hunting either because they really jemlachus, western tragopan Tragopan melanocephalus, did not hunt or they did not wish to talk about this musk deer Moschus chrysogaster and Himalayan monal controversial topic. During these second stage interviews Lophophorus impejanus being most widely hunted. All we asked which species were hunted, why they were of these species were overwhelmingly distributed and hunted and the number of individual animals killed hunted in Himachal Pradesh; the only hunting of any of during the last 12 months. these four species in Uttaranchal was that of musk deer Species considered to be available for hunting in a around a single village. particular area were determined by combining informa- The most widely hunted species in Uttaranchal were tion on the distance that hunters travelled and that on black francolin Francolinus francolinus, chukar partridge species’ distributions, including from our own surveys. Alectoris chukar, koklass pheasant Pucrasia macrolopha, Species hunted and the reasons for hunting were taken white-crested kalij Lophura leucomelanos, barking deer directly from the results of structured interviews. Extrac- Muntiacus muntjak, goral Nemorhaedus goral, Indian por- tion patterns were analysed at two levels. Firstly, we cupine Hystrix indica and Indian wildboar Sus scrofa. looked at the spatial distribution of hunting by calculat- In Himachal Pradesh the widely hunted species were ing the percentage of villages around which a species cheer pheasant Catreus wallichi, chukar partridge, koklass was hunted. Therefore, if a species was hunted around pheasant, Himalayan monal, western tragopan, barking four of the 12 villages from which it was reported, it deer, goral, Himalayan black bear Selenarctos thibetanus, was hunted in 33% of villages. Secondly, we calculated Himalayan brown bear Ursus arctos, Himalayan tahr, the offtake by analysing the number of individuals musk deer and leopard Panthera pardus. that hunting households reported they killed each year. The number of individuals of each species that were Again, not all species were present around all villages killed by each hunting household during the previous and so when a species was not present it was not con- year is given in Table 2. The mean offtake per hunting sidered available for a household to hunt. Thus there household was highest for kalij pheasant, chukar par- are different sample sizes in the results. The average tridge and koklass pheasant. More goral were killed extraction of meat by weight was calculated by multi- than any other mammal. There were differences in plying the number of animals reportedly killed each offtake patterns among species between the two states. year per household by the species’ average body weight In Uttaranchal, a mean of nine kalij was killed by (Prater, 1971; Ali & Ripley, 1987). each hunting household, whereas none were killed Comparisons of differences in extraction rates between in Himachal Pradesh, even though they were present. community-managed and state-managed forest areas In contrast, many more individuals of three other was possible only for Uttaranchal, as there are no Galliformes (cheer pheasant, chukar partridge and © 2004 FFI, Oryx, 38(4), 426–431 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.58, on 27 Sep 2021 at 12:14:19, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0030605304000808 428 R.