Wild Yak Hunting in Northern Tibet: Local Hunting Culture in the Context of Conservation Initiatives and State Policies

为期8周的实地考察是一个长期项目的最后阶段，该项目旨在记录和分析青藏高原的狩猎文化。这项田野调查将研究西藏北方游牧民族对野牦牛或龙（Bos grunniens）的狩猎。这种特别的关注有几个原因。首先，野牦牛代表了我的大型项目中需要研究的最后一个主要的西藏狩猎物种，该项目在理论上基于对当地知识，实践和社会经济条件的逐种狩猎分析。第二，今天狩猎野牦牛代表了不同和相互冲突的利益的独特融合：藏族人认为这是他们文化史上地位最高的狩猎，将其与领导、神性、权力、英雄主义和男子气概联系在一起，并在经济上将其视为任何动物的最大肉类产量;国际自然资源保护主义者将野牦牛列为高度濒危物种，需要最大限度的法律的保护，以防止狩猎;而中国政府则试图通过实施既鼓励又禁止狩猎野牦牛的矛盾政策来展示其对西藏游牧民等当地社区的控制。这项研究将提供的知识包括：i.有史以来第一次记录了野生牦牛的实际狩猎技术，并记录了相关的当地文化知识和实践; ii.调查最近的保护法对狩猎野牦牛的影响，以及狩猎行为如何因此而改变甚至停止; iii.中国政府将游牧民安置在比他们的前现代放牧区更北的地方的政策，以及野生动物范围和人类活动领域之间的重大新重叠，对野牦牛狩猎的评估。

The proposed 8 weeks of fieldwork represent the final phase of a longer-term project to document and analyze hunting culture on the Tibetan plateau. The fieldwork will study the hunting of wild yak or drong (Bos grunniens) by nomadic pastoralists in northern Tibet. This particular focus has several reasons. Firstly, the wild yak represents the last major Tibetan game species requiring research within my larger project, which is theoretically based upon a species-byspecies analysis of hunting in terms of local knowledge, practices and socio-economic conditions. Secondly, hunting of wild yak today represents a unique confluence of different and conflicting interests: Tibetans regard it as the hunt of highest status in their cultural history, associating it with leadership, divinity, power, heroism, and masculinity, and recognizing it economically as the largest yield of meat per animal of any kill; International conservationists rank wild yak as a highly endangered species requiring maximum legal protection from hunting; while the Chinese state seeks to demonstrate its control over local communities such as nomadic pastoralists in Tibet by applying contradictory policies which both encourage wild yak hunting and also prohibit it. New contributions to knowledge which this research will provide include: i. The first ever documentation of actual hunting techniques used for wild yak, and a record of the body of associated local cultural knowledge and practice; ii. Investigation of the impact recent conservation laws are having upon hunting the wild yak, and how hunting behaviour is modified or even stopped as a result; iii. An appraisal of hunting of wild yak in relation to the Chinese state’s policy of resettling nomads far further northwards than their pre-modern grazing areas and significant new overlaps between wild animal ranges and spheres of human activity this has created.