Reflections from three months of Research and Community-based Conservation

by Francis Commercon, Menglun Township, Yunnan, China

With only a month left on my Fulbright, I already know I don’t want to leave this place

 

The scar a wild boar left on his cheek wrinkles into a smile as he recalls the Red Junglefowl and other wildlife he shot forty years ago at this natural spring deep in the mountainous tropical forest of Xishuangbanna, southwest China. He talks fondly of the muntjacs who will come to eat the “Yugan” fruits and the palm civet whose muddy feet left their prints up a nearby tree. I peer through my binoculars at the bird ponds we just finished building together. The ancient liana on which I sit was my friend’s perch so many years ago as he aimed at his quarry. Over my interactions with the local ethnic people of this region (primarily the Dai and the Akha), I have remarked time and time again that their appreciation for wildlife is no less than my own—and indeed it is oftentimes rooted in a much deeper connection to the forest than I could ever have. The Akha friends leading me through the forest today are eager to help me and my research institute, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Gardens (XTBG), build community-based ecotourism to promote biodiversity conservation in his village. But it is clear they see the animals of this forest fundamentally differently than me or the ecologists and educators at XTBG. They reminisce over muntjac meat eaten long ago, and they ask if I have ever tried it. And this is where I feel the complex dilemma that follows me throughout my fieldwork.

I owe so much of my learning to friends like these. Their contributions are also integral the future of wildlife conservation in Menglun Township.

 

I feel stuck between an anthropologist’s desire to integrate into the ways of his host community to understand them more deeply, and a conservationist’s very real concern that overhunting is irreparably damaging the forest ecosystem. I cannot voice strong opinion against the hunting and consumption of wild meat without destroying my connections to those informants who would teach me the most about their community’s hunting. I know my calls against eating wildlife, if coming from the outside, will never cause behavioral change. I know conservation behavior will only come from within the community; it will only spread through existing systems of social influence. That is why I want to get into the “inside” and understand people’s psychology and the social influences behind behavior. So, I feel confused between my biodiversity conservation goals, which involve attempts to change the community based on ideals from the “outside,” and my dream of being a good anthropologist, objectively studying his host community from the inside. I often wish I had not specialized on studying illegal wildlife hunting; I would have been allowed deeper into my study communities if I had instead delved into non-illegal aspects of traditional culture. And I often wish that I did not have the personal agenda of publishing my results for the western world to see, because attempting to tell this story according to the statistical version of truth steered me away from reliance on ethnography, which would have been more socially sensitive. As I will describe below, I spent the last few months collecting large quantities of anonymous survey responses to uncover correlations between hunting behavior and various levels of norms and peer influence in Dai and Akha villages around Menglun Township. I was too preoccupied with an ecologist’s desire for replication and statistical significance to accord adequate attention to the more spontaneous and unstructured collection of ethnographic data. But I know ethnography would be much more useful for understanding the psychology of topics like illegal hunting. Looking back, I have many ideas about how I can improve my approach as I move forward as an international conservation social scientist and as a conservation practitioner.

The man who showed me this proud memory said the foreign student pictured studied Akha traditional folk songs. Perhaps because he did not study hunting, he was actually permitted to go hunting with friends in his study community. I wonder, though, if I had the opportunity to join them to go hunting, would I partake in the spirit of better understanding the activity? Or would I refuse in the name of creating a “good example” and trying to discourage the activity?  The bowl of meat in the background (above the photograph) is wild squirrel. Squirrels probably aren’t as sensitive to hunting as other species. So is all hunting wrong? Can hunting squirrels be okay? What is the definition of “wrong” anyway?

 

A good friend and the village leader of one of the participating ecotourism villages is helping me aim the camera trap. I am still learning proper camera trapping techniques (getting better every day!), and I think these traps were placed a little too low to the ground (we wanted to get clear shots of Pittas). I’m worried wild boar will knock down the camera….

Setting up camera traps at the location these villagers believe will be best for developing birding ecotourism

Being in the forest with my Akha friends over the past several days has felt like a healthy rectification of my previous approaches. Unlike with the Dai, whose forest belongs to the strictly regulated Nature Reserve, with the Akha I can trek through their forests—which are outside the Nature Reserve—without worrying about being caught by the police and without my friends worrying about accidentally doing something illegal. I can observe their local knowledge and connection to the plants and animals as they guide me along the bamboo lined ridges and banana-filled stream gullies of their ancestors. They tell me how and where to see the wild boar whose tracks we frequently encounter. They can detect where a Silver Pheasant recently foraged simply through a cursory scan of the leaf litter. They know which vine will yield drinkable water when you are thirsty, and they see the walls of green vegetation around us like a pharmacopeia of medicines. With them, my journey through the landscape is full of fascinating tastes, smells, and stories. Valuation of nature in my conservation-oriented social circles tends toward non-consumptive observation and protection. I am always worried about the human impacts on nature as being unsustainable. But the Akha people are a major component of their forest ecosystem, using innumerable forest products and, through that use, affecting the forest in turn. They seem to have never worried about their harvests being unsustainable, perhaps because throughout their history the forest was always vast and its resources were always abundant. I think most people in my study communities do not grasp the underlying principles of the modern conservation narrative that nature is a fragile thing to be “protected” from depletion and destruction by humans; this is still a fairly foreign concept that has not proved relevant until the past two decades. People here were still wanting for food in the 90s. The forest is, for them, first and foremost a resource to be used. As I hike through the forest with my Akha friends, I try to see the environment through their eyes. I know they love the forest just as much as I do, but their understanding of people’s relationship to it is vastly different from mine. I think understanding and respecting this difference in understandings between local people and conservationists is likely the greatest challenge in developing community-based conservation programs.

My friend demonstrating how tasty these figs are. I agree with him. They are very tasty. 

My fieldwork in the Akha people’s community forests over the past several days is part of an effort to survey birds and wildlife to determine optimal locations for bird ponds. We are trying to establish locations to attract birds with water and regular provisioning of meal worms (i.e. “bird ponds”) so bird photographers will pay to come take pictures of birds. The income is intended to generate economic incentives that would discourage the rampant harvest of wild birds from these community and state-owned forests. One day while setting up camera traps, we heard five gunshots in one hour from the nearby hillside.

In the mornings, if you put in arduous effort to climb the highest peaks, you can enjoy the spectacular “cloud sea”. All of Menglun Township is enveloped in a thick dismal fog each morning, but up above the fog, the scenery is beautiful beyond words.

I recently visited an Akha village in the Mengsong region of Xishuangbanna that has seen some progress in encouraging bird conservation through similar bird pond ecotourism development. Huilashan Village has five privately-owned bird ponds, of which a portion of the proceeds go toward village projects. Although this small group of pioneering villagers has yet to break even on their investment in bird ponds (they have personally funded all expenses), the influx of birders brought in by their efforts has led to new community norms about protecting and appreciating birds in non-consumptive ways. The tourists also bring in income to a community-owned local restaurant and by purchasing the villagers’ tea (which may bring in more income than the birdwatching itself). But my discussions with the assistant village leader made me suspect that some form of social influence was responsible for behavioral change disproportionate to the economic benefits of the project. He even described how his community patrols, catches, and fines people unsustainably fishing or otherwise unlawfully exploiting forest resources. I’ll note that such community-based protection of natural resources—and the construction of the bird ponds themselves—is only possible because the land is not part of the nature reserve.

I am currently leading planning of a two-day trip to take our project participants to Huilashan Village so they can learn from the experience of villagers who have already endeavored in birding ecotourism for two years.

These two men have developed promising bird pond ecotourism in Huilashan village, five hours away from the villages we are working with in Menglun

Another critical challenge for community-based conservation is the discrepancy between local and western scientific versions of knowledge and reality. Specifically, I have seen local ecological knowledge (LEK) clash with western scientific ecological knowledge (WSEK) when the camera traps we deployed failed to corroborate villagers’ assertions that their chosen bird pond sites had many specific species of wildlife. In a recent meeting, I realized other project leaders were convinced that the villagers were exaggerating and that hunting pressure had left their forests devoid of interesting animals. I found myself defending the villagers’ strong conviction that there might still be animals, that the cameras had not functioned properly or had not been left for long enough–but the villagers’ anecdotal evidence is often unpersuasive for those educated in scientific thought.

 

Now I am designing a new camera trapping survey using improved knowledge of the method to re-examine the wildlife coming to the bird ponds, and I am particularly focusing on surveying for Blue-naped and Hooded Pittas, which would be of particular value for attracting Chinese tourists. I am letting local villagers lead me to places where they feel Pittas can be reliably seen. In the process I have improved both my understanding of LEK (villagers’ vast knowledge of what birds can be seen where and at what times of year) as well as WSEK (camera trapping techniques).

This “Pomelo Boss” from Fujian is a striking example of disregard and disrespect for local knowledge. Here, he is teaching these Akha farmers “scientific” ways of pruning their pomelo trees, but he spoke to his pupils as if they were incompetent. He complained that the ethnic minority people in Xishuangbanna are so backward and lazy that they do not apply the herbicides and pesticides necessary to make their produce competitive in the urban fruit markets he targets. And he expressed to me that he sees no point in learning anything about their local language. Needless to say I disliked him, but I was cordial and polite throughout my time with him.

In my last few weeks in China, I would like to finish my involvement with the bird pond ecotourism work through focus-group discussions in each village regarding the results of my hunting surveys. In five villages (and soon a sixth), I collected 139 anonymous responses to a 50 question survey using Likert-type scales to quantify people’s perceptions of social norms, law enforcement effectiveness, and moral obligations and to statistically correlate these with hunting behavior and intentions. I feel that such discussion would yield invaluable insight for interpreting the results. I will combine these discussions with discussion of the birds I have recorded during my forays into their forest. I will teach them the Chinese names and some educational facts about them, and I will record notes on their local knowledge of each species.

Small group style questionnaire answer sessions seemed to work the best for surveying about the behavioral psychology and motivations behind hunting. In a village official’s home, and surrounded by friends, respondents felt less afraid of the questions. Because they all submitted their responses simultaneously into the ballot box, the protection of anonymity was obvious. Unfortunately this method did not always appear to work. I feel that one can not possibly obtain reliable data on illegal behaviors unless it is through close friendships with one or two key informants–which of course renders conclusions questionable with regard to whether they can be extrapolated to the rest of the community.

I always guided groups of respondents through a set of practice questions. Then I left the scene and asked them to administer the audio recorded questions on their own. My absence was intended to encourage truthful responding. 

And I will also finish the editing and proofing of my dataset for my Fulbright research, which is a separate research project from the community-based ecotourism outlined above. Over the past few months, I used 130 pilot survey responses from five pilot villages to develop a 30 question survey investigating how peer influence and social networks shape wild meat consumption in Dai communities. I proceeded to collect responses from 360 people in my host village by coordinating a team of four local assistants. I still have to comb through the data to edit mistakes, but at least all my data is entered into my computer. Then I have to prepare for the long job of turning my data into results and then writing a paper. I feel truly hopeful that I may have uncovered some interesting findings for both the sociology and human dimensions of conservation literature, and I feel giddy with the excitement of scientific discovery!

Here, an assistant guides a respondent through the first couple questions of the survey in my Dai host community. This is followed by a set of practice questions, and then a self-administered, audio-recorded questionnaire similar in style to the surveys administered in the Akha villages. The respondent inserts his responses into a ballot box at the end of the (usually 10 minute) survey so that the assistant will not see his or her responses when the assistant collects the answers. No names were written on the questionnaire, although unique numbering allowed me to link responses to respondent identity. 

Here is a sampling of the materials I prepared for the Dai social network survey. 

Below, I have added several pictures to tell the stories of many interesting moments for which the above paragraphs had no space. There was a time I wished for everything I did and saw to be noticed and recognized by others. I saw my life as a struggle to construct a persona which, when squeezed into a college or scholarship application, would propel me forward professionally. Now I start to question what “forward” really means, and I begin to doubt whether I care that anybody but myself knows what I’m doing with my days. I applied for graduate school and also for a major nationally-competitive scholarship in the past couple months, and despite incredible effort on each application, I realized that constant aspiration for professional advancement may simply leave me unfulfilled. I want to live my life so that if I die tomorrow I will be happy with what I did today.

Sunset in Menglun

This is the tomb of one of the last Dai princesses of Menglun. She was the daughter of Menglun’s King before the People’s Republic of China came into existence. Here is the final resting place for her spirit, in the sacred burial forest outside of our village.

During some pilot surveys in a Dai village on the other side of the township, I witnessed the Buddhist practice of releasing fish and snails purchased from the market into the river as an act of compassion and kindness. They also send hundreds of Styrofoam and plastic candle-lit flowers down the river. The ceremony is beautiful and moving, and I just tried not to think of the environmental impact. The village leader of the next Dai community downstream explained to me his plan to get his community to only use biodegradable materials in their flowers, so there is progress coming!

For the “Closed Village” Dai Festival in early December, all villagers gather in the center of the village and pray for a full two mornings. On the first day they provide offerings that are blessed with holy water and paraded around the group three times. On the second day the offerings are even greater in diversity and abundance, and several monks from the local temple and nearby temples come to read scripture for several hours before blessing everyone with holy water. During the ceremony, the monks, the spirit at the village center, and all the offerings are connected with a thin white sacred string. In the preceding weeks, the elders of the village have been weaving grass into long sacred ropes that are now among the offerings being blessed. Upon conclusion of the ceremony, the ropes are strung together and encircle the entire village. Every family sets off firecrackers to scare away the ghosts. As a foreign guest, I was not permitted to live inside the village that night or the following morning, when all elder men joined under the fig tree to slaughter and consume a pig. Festivals like these are likely why the Dai communities are so tightly knit, why the feeling of community is so strong in Dai communities. 

I acted in a reality TV show by Hunnan Satellite TV, taking three Chinese celebrities (to my right in the photo) into caves to catch bats and spread awareness of biodiversity conservation among the Chinese public in preparation for the October 2020 COP15 of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kunming, China. 

I was helping my host father move an irrigation pipe to his pomelo orchard when he found this armed snare and de-activated it with a stick. It was baited with a piece of chicken meat, and was likely an effort to kill predators that came to eat villagers’ chickens. If he hadn’t seen it, one of us might have lost a foot.  

The director of training programs at XTBG, Zhao Jiangbo, leads a birding workshop for the villagers building bird ponds in their communities. 

I think this is how I’ll commute to work when I’m a big CEO of some organization in Washington DC in the future :p

I am endlessly grateful to have been accepted as a part of Dr. Quan Ruichang’s research group at XTBG. This is my second family outside the village, and they make me feel at home in China, so far away from my family and friends in the US.