Human-nature relations and political ecology of tiger conservation in the Idu Mishmi of Northeast India

这项奖学金的主要目的是发表我的博士研究成果。在我的博士研究期间，我在印度东北部一个名为迪邦山谷的地区发现了一种科学上未知的老虎种群，该地区由当地人拥有和管理。目前，只有不到4000只野生老虎，大多数都在由军事警卫巡逻的严格保护区内。尽管这一策略在一些地区拯救了老虎，但它也被批评为剥夺了许多当地社区的权利，使他们与老虎保护主义者之间产生了不信任。因此，在没有任何正式保护机制的情况下，中国（老虎器官的最大消费国）附近存在这种老虎种群，这与保护界对保护野生虎所需条件的广泛共识相矛盾。在我的论文中，我使用了多学科的方法来探索这种独特的老虎种群在迪邦山谷的生态，其人民的文化，伊杜米什米及其政治历史中存在的原因。在2013- 2015年的25个月里，我与伊都族家庭住在一起，学习伊都语，参与日常生活，包括农业、狩猎和当地节日。我利用远程相机技术（部署了近300个相机“陷阱”）、基因采样和野生动物狩猎调查进行了广泛的调查，以了解老虎和猎物种群的状况。总之，这些方法使我对该地区的野生动物、伊杜与自然的关系、伊杜萨满教和种族间关系的地缘政治有了细致入微的了解。针对论文的问题，我得出的结论是，老虎在迪邦山谷的持续繁荣是由于伊都土地所有权和土地利用制度的多层相互作用，这些制度阻止了大规模的栖息地变化，限制狩猎和野生肉类消费的禁忌，季节性迁徙生态使某些动物物种在一年中大部分时间无法被猎人获取，以及印度政府的保护主义政策，这些政策迄今为止限制了迪邦河谷的大规模外来者定居。特别是，我发现伊都人相信与老虎有亲缘关系——一种建立在人类和自然世界平等和相互依存基础上的意识形态——在它们从周围的景观中消失时，对它们的存在做出了重大贡献。然而，伊都虎的故事因外部因素而变得复杂，主要是印度政府关于大型水电站大坝和高速公路发展的政策，这些政策可能会对当地文化产生持久的影响，并最终对它所保护的老虎产生影响。这项工作质疑了人与自然分离的现有范式，这是生物多样性保护的基础。它促使我们考虑自然保护的其他模式，在这些模式中，当地文化习俗可以比传统的执法发挥更大的作用。通过奖学金，我计划与三个用户群体接触：(a)学术界-通过在同行评议的期刊上发表我的研究，进一步讨论当地人在生物多样性保护中的作用；(b)决策者和保护工作者——向自由记者提供出版材料，并与当地宣传团体合作编写政策简报，以影响决策，特别是关于基础设施发展的决策；(c)当地伊都人（他们一再哀叹伊都语言和文化的丧失）——与当地合作伙伴共同为一所当地学校编写“伊都语言和文化”课程。最后，我还计划在我的博士研究的基础上撰写资助提案，并提议与印度东北部的另一个土著社区进行类似的跨学科研究，以了解自然、文化和地缘政治之间关系的区域模式。

The primary aim of this fellowship is to produce publications from my doctoral research. During my PhD research, I identified a scientifically-unknown population of tigers in Northeast India thriving in an area called Dibang Valley, owned and managed by local people. Currently, less than 4000 tigers occur in the wild, most within strictly protected reserves patrolled by military-styled guards. Although this strategy has saved tigers in some areas, it has been criticized for dispossessing many local communities generating mistrust between them and the tiger conservationists. Therefore, the existence of this tiger population in close proximity to China (the largest consumer of tiger parts) without any formal protection mechanisms contradicted widely-held agreement within the conservation community on the conditions required to conserve wild tigers. In my thesis, I used a multi-disciplinary approach to explore the reasons for existence of this unique tiger population in Dibang Valley's ecology, the culture of its people, the Idu Mishmi, and its political history.Fieldwork lasted 25 months over 2013-15 during which I lived with Idu families learning the Idu language and participating in daily life including farming, hunting and local festivals. I conducted widespread surveys using remote camera technology (deploying nearly 300 camera 'traps'), genetic sampling and wildlife hunting surveys to understand the status of tiger and prey populations. Together, these methods allowed me to develop a nuanced understanding of the area's wildlife, Idu-nature relations, Idu shamanism and geopolitics of inter-ethnic relations. In response to the thesis question, I concluded that tigers had continued to thrive in Dibang Valley due to a multi-layered interaction of Idu land tenure and land-use system that prevent large-scale habitat change, taboos that impose restriction on hunting and wild meat consumption, seasonal migratory ecology which makes certain animals species unavailable to hunters for large parts of the year, and the Indian government's protectionist policies that have so far restricted large-scale outsider settlement in Dibang Valley. In particular, I found that Idu beliefs in kinship with tigers - an ideology grounded in equality and interdependence of human and natural worlds - had contributed significantly to their persistence while they had disappeared from the surrounding landscape.However, the Idu-tiger story is complicated by external factors, chiefly the Indian government's policies on large-scale hydro-power dam and highway development that is likely to have a lasting impact on local culture, and ultimately the tiger it has helped protect. This work questions the existing paradigm of separation between people and nature as fundamental to biodiversity conservation. It probes us to consider alternative models of nature conservation where local cultural practices could play a muchlarger role than conventional law-enforcement. Through the fellowship, I plan to engage with three user groups: (a) Academia - by publishing my research in peer-reviewed journals to further debates on the role of local people in biodiversity conservation; (b) Policy-makers and conservation practitioners - by supplying published material to freelance journalists and working with local advocacy groups on policy briefs to influence policy-making, particularly, regarding infrastructure development; (c) Local Idu people (who repeatedly lament the loss of Idu language and culture) - by co-producing, with a local partner, a course curriculum in 'Idu language and culture' for a local school. Finally, I also plan to write funding proposals that build upon my doctoral research and propose to conduct similar cross-disciplinary studies with another indigenous community in Northeast India to understand regional patterns in relationships between nature, culture and geopolitics.