Indigenous people pay price for poaching

Illegal wildlife trade is the fourth most lucrative trafficking crime after drugs, humans, and weapons. Most wildlife ends up in China and Southeast Asia to be used mainly in traditional medicine or as bushmeat.

Nepal is both the source and transit for wildlife trafficking, and while the authorities have been successful in protecting flagship mammals like tigers, rhinos, and leopards, the country still serves as a major transit point for less popular wildlife.

Despite strict laws against wildlife crimes members of indigenous communities are easily tempted by organised transboundary criminals. They are recruited to poach endangered animals and plants, and end up in jail, while ring leaders are rarely caught. 

Many are not hardened criminals, just regular folk like Bishnu Adhikari, 30, who served time in Kathmandu’s Central Jail. He had gone with a friend to sell pangolin scales without knowing it was illegal and that the punishment was so harsh.

Bikash Chhetri, a Grade 11 student, was riding a motorcycle with college friends when they were intercepted by the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB). Chhetri says he had no idea his  friend was carrying the contraband in his bag.

Both Adhikari and Chettri served five years in jail. But most people from Nepal’s indigenous communities are often unaware of the protected status or importance of the wildlife they were recruited to smuggle, handle, or transport.

“Most of indigenous people involved in wildlife trade in Nepal are not criminals, they are poor and live near protected areas are simply trying to support their families, and mostly it is opportunistic killing,” says wildlife researcher Kumar Paudel of Greenhood Nepal. “Often they are exploited by higher-ups in the ladder of organised crime.”

Paudel filed a petition at the Supreme Court in 2018, and the Supreme Court five years later ordered the government to implement the law in a full, fair, and consistent manner.

One of the indigenous communities is the semi-nomadic Chepang who have a long tradition of eating fruit bats. Dibesh Karmacharya of the Center of Molecular Dynamics Nepal in Kathmandu has been looking into new diseases for over a decade and a half, and this community in Makwanpur next to Chitwan National Park was selected.

“Bats are known to carry viruses and bacteria, which are not harmful to them, but when humans get exposed the microbes can mutate and become pathogens with high transmissibility,” explains Karmacharya, who found that many Chepang had been imprisoned for poaching. 

“Indigenous communities are often disenfranchised and at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder, and need some kind of income,” says Karmacharya. “They are hunter-gatherers and have knowledge of the land as well as wildlife, so they get recruited by wildlife traffickers often getting caught, and not those who hire them.”

CLIMATE FACTOR

Global warming has meant that vectors that carry pathogens, as well as animals, are also moving to higher altitudes. As temperature rises, glaciers melt, and previously barren slopes have vegetation. Many mammals, such as common leopards, which are found in the foothills are moving up the mountains to share the habitat of snow leopards. Tigers have also been known to move out of Tarai national parks to seek cooler climes in the Mahabharata Range.

Besides the risk of being caught, indigenous communities also are exposed to disease when they handle wildlife and harvest organs. In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was speculation that the virus had jumped from pangolins to humans, which has since been disproven.

Even so, pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammal. The scales of the anteater are thought to have medical properties and are used in traditional Chinese medicine in China, as well as eaten as a delicacy in parts of Asia.

Tulshi Laxmi Suwal of the Small Mammals Conservation and Research Foundation (SMCRF), who did her PhD on pangolins from Taiwan, says there is a link between climate, increased human-wildlife contact, and emerging diseases.

“Climate change is directly affecting their food and habitat,” explains Suwal. “Pangolins need a lot of water and if they don’t get it ectoparasites under their scales might be easily released to their surroundings. But water is becoming scarcer with climate breakdown.” 

Researcher Kumar Paudel says law enforcement must be driven not so much by the total number of traffickers arrested, but by the goal of discouraging people from participating in the trade. This means fair and accountable implementation of the law so that indigenous people are not disproportionately impacted. 

Some ring leaders involved in tiger and rhino poaching have been arrested, but a handful of them staged jailbreaks during the September GenZ protests and are again at large — raising the risk that poaching may increase. 

“Investigation must move to the upper echelons of the trade,” says Paudel. “And indigenous people need alternative livelihoods and education so they are not easily recruited to hunt down wildlife.” 

The solution may lie in small, local incentives that can help communities realise the importance of conservation while also empowering them, socially and economically. One such example is the Pangolin Trail in Bagh Bhairav Community Forest in Kirtipur near Kathmandu.

After their study found the community forest to be a habitat for pangolins and endangered bird species, SMCRF built a trekking trail which has since been handed over to the local community which can get income from visitor fees. The local government has expanded the trail, added an information center, and runs clean-up campaigns.

This gave the local Tamang community of 100 households a sense of ownership and agency. Local villagers have been trained to become citizen scientists, and help in recording pangolin behaviour. One of them is Sun Laxmi Pakhrin, who is not formally educated, but works in pangolin protection using GPS tracking systems and camera traps. 

A community previously notorious for theft, drug trafficking and wildlife poaching is now reformed. Families are also involved in small businesses such as poultry.

Suwal says: “Women in indigenous communities are now in decision-making roles and the guardians of nature and wildlife.”

With contribution from Qian Sun, Global Voices.