Herding with Snow Leopards
In Conversation with Shafqat Hussain
In this interview, Shafqat Hussain speaks with Vasant Saberwal about how conservation efforts to ‘save’ the snow leopards in the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges need to be questioned and reexamined.
Vasant: What is the mainstream conservationist position regarding pastoral communities in the Himalayas? How do they represent agro-pastoralists in the mountains?
Shafqat: The dominant narrative about conservation among the forestry department, government institutions, and international conservation organisations hasn’t changed much in the last 40 years, surprisingly. Especially in the context of the Karakoram and Himalayan ranges, there’s an unchanging narrative that snow leopards are threatened because of pastoralists who encroach on their habitats and degrade their natural prey. There’s another implicit assumption about herders that they should quietly accept these conditions imposed on them and somehow tolerate a certain inner level of predation of their livestock because it’s necessary for conservation. As the larger image of a conservation area is still that of wilderness, herders, especially those who live there year long, are seen as threats.
V: So what’s the problem with that narrative?
S: This narrative is wrong for several reasons. One is the moral, philosophical argument of who gets to decide who stays where? Another is the ecological perspective; even if you keep people out of snow leopard habitats, can you keep snow leopards out of human societies? It’s not simply about people encroaching on snow leopard habitats, snow leopards also encroach on people’s habitats. When looking at it from the lens of social justice and ecological pragmatism, it just doesn’t make sense to create such strict boundaries and try to enforce them so vehemently.
V: Can you speak about how the problems and discrepancies of the mainstream narrative might be based on data, not just limited to morality and philosophy?
S: There are arguments that snow leopards are keystone species or top predators, yet there are no studies that prove that. Although snow leopards are considered this elusive, mythical species, the kind of predator that confines itself to places without humans, globally 25% of their diet is livestock. In our areas, we have been monitoring snow leopard diets for 10–15 years and the data shows that 35% of that diet is livestock! There’s just little to no acknowledgement of this data. Again, it’s considered a problem created by the herders themselves. It’s very difficult to maintain that these animals can confine themselves away from society. In reality, these herding communities are unwittingly subsidising snow leopard conservation efforts globally.
V: Can you elaborate on how these local communities subsidise conservation practices? Is it just through these livestock figures or are there other ways?
S: Not only is their livestock a resource contributing to snow leopard conservation, but the labour of these communities is also definitely expected by conservation organisations. They posit that people should be more vigilant, invest in more anti-predatory technologies, and voluntarily change their livestock herding practices and traditions to accommodate wildlife and the goals of conservation institutions. Some costs are difficult to measure objectively.
For example, how do you put the cost on the stress these communities have to go through when they must stay up all night after spotting a snow leopard and knowing it might attack their herd? These costs are imposed on herders which then amount to a subsidy that sustains the conservation narrative.
V: You question the other fundamental aspect of this narrative: there is a steady decline of snow leopards. Then there is this attribution of who is at fault, what are your thoughts on that?
S: My data critiques the argument that snow leopards were once abundant and they’ve now declined because of human activity. There’s another that snow leopards prey on livestock because their “natural” prey has declined and I question this very notion of natural prey. To snow leopards, goats look and act like natural prey! The argument of scarcity is built on the rare sightings of the animal. Before trail cameras and genetic techniques, you had to go out and see a snow leopard by tracing its tracks. You can read historical accounts where hunters and explorers were getting frustrated because they could see tracks but couldn’t see the “bloody” animal! Fast forward to 2010 and it is the same situation. Plenty of tracks but no animals. They were elusive and hard to sight 100 years and remain so. They were attacking livestock back in the 1850s, and they are still doing so. Do rare sightings mean that there is a decline in numbers?
From 2010 onwards, more people are looking for them. With better technologies, they’re finding that they’re there, and, in my book, I’ve made the point that they’ve always been there! In 2017, the snow leopards were downlisted from endangered to vulnerable so that made me question, what made that possible? Is it that the subsidies provided by these herding communities are keeping these numbers high?
This brings me to my main point: if these snow leopards are somehow considered not endangered and aren’t under threat of going extinct, then it hurts the conservation narrative and the existence of the industry itself which thrives on this crisis narrative.
So they have created a counting exercise, conducted every twenty years to know how many snow leopards are left. The exercise serves to perpetuate the idea that the numbers are in continual decline.
V: Himalayan, particularly alpine, ecosystems are undisturbed habitats that are going through a period of transition where fewer pastoralists are moving up into the area. How does this affect the snow leopard population?
S: Another unreflective ‘fact’ thrown out by conservation narratives and institutions is that the habitat for snow leopards is shrinking. Snow leopard habitats are above 12–15 thousand feet and they are completely out of bounds for humans for at least six months. This might be different for lions or tigers in other regions where their habitats can easily be transformed into agricultural fields.
The main threat that snow leopards face in terms of loss of habitat and transformation is global warming. These are not caused by the practices of poor herders, but rather the practices of rich consumers and citizens of first world countries.
If you look at villages and valleys along the Karakoram highway you see the depopulation of high pastures happening rapidly. Very few families continue to keep animals. I was up in a lovely settlement at 12,500 feet with 60–70 huts, but just one couple was living there. There are many other villages like this.
So, does such depopulation lead to reduced prey for the snow leopard? Perhaps. But you are also seeing an increase in wild prey populations in the Karakoram — largely owing to the trophy hunting in the area. I’ve seen ibex herds by the roadside. So yes, I think on the whole one might see a reducing herder presence in the Himalayas, and I’m not sure what the consequences of this might be for the snow leopards. But one does need to accept that this is an argument that is particular to these high alpine landscapes, and one cannot generalise from here to more densely populated areas.
Bio: Shafqat Hussain is George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian Studies and professor of anthropology at Trinity College, US. He holds a PhD in Anthropology and Environmental Studies from Yale University.
