Working within the tribal structure

Tyngshain Dewkhaid, a 42-year-old schoolteacher in Phlangwanbroi, has, like all his fellow villagers, heard the gibbons’ song since his childhood. And he’s not ready to let it go of it.

“The hoolock gibbons are an important part of Hima Malai Sohmat’s soundscape, its life and identity,” he said. “We must save them.”

There’s even a local saying that as long as you hear the gibbon’s song, you’re within the boundary of Hima Malai Sohmat, Dewkhaid said.

He was instrumental in forming a local organisation, Malai Sohmat Tourism and Multipurpose Cooperative Society, in 2017, in an effort to develop sustainable ecotourism in the area. He said he believes the hoolock gibbons could become a key tourist draw. This, said Dewkhaid, would help convince others in his community to work toward protecting the species.

Over the past few months, Dewkhaid has been conducting a community awareness and sensitisation campaign “to help people learn to appreciate the environment and wildlife in general and the hoolock gibbon in particular” in the five villages of Hima Malai Sohmat.

But for this to happen, Dewkhaid says, he first had to win the support of the political authorities in Hima Malai Sohmat. In line with Khasi traditions, the local administration has three tiers: “The syiem [chief] is at the top, the founding clan members in the middle, and the masses at the bottom,” he said.

“So for any conservation efforts to take wing here, you need to have the backing and blessing of the syiem and the political elites as well as the community.”

Dewkhaid says it took more than a year to convince these elites of the value of his project.

“It’s bearing fruit now,” he says. “Recently we’ve been able to reach a breakthrough: banning the hunting of gibbons inside Hima Malai Sohmat’s territory.”

As part of the community awareness program, he is screening a series of wildlife and conservation documentaries in the five villages of Hima Malai Sohmat, with the support of a small team of conservationists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), who are currently in the area to survey the gibbon population in the community forest.

One evening in May, a crowd of about 100 villagers huddled in the courtyard of a small concrete house in Phlangwanbroi, while a few young boys sat on the roof for a closer view of the screen.

There was a mix of curiosity, enthusiasm and befuddlement in the air; few in the village own a television or smartphone.

A few minutes later, the celebrated David Attenborough film Great Barrier Reef appeared on the screen. The visuals of exquisite marine life left the crowd awestruck.

Once the film ended, Dewkhaid explained in the local language what the film had just depicted: coral reefs, marine biodiversity, and so on. Then he shifted to the topic of hoolock gibbons and why they must be conserved, explaining how frugivores like hoolock gibbons contribute to the regeneration and growth of the forest by dispersing seeds and acting as natural pollinators.

According to Dewkhaid, the awareness campaign seems to have achieved at least one of its goals: in the past two years, there have been no reports of gibbons hunted in the area.

Yet there are challenges galore.

“In Hima Malai Sohmat, the traditional slash-and-burn agriculture, often blamed by governments and conservationists alike for forest loss and degradation, has considerably declined in the recent years,” said Dewkhaid. But, he said, it has paved the way for a new evil, equally harmful if not more so: broom grass (Thysanolaena maxima) cultivation.

“Broom grass is a highly invasive species. It sucks all the nutrients of the soil and often leads to water scarcity in the area it is grown,” said Biang Lana Syiem, leader of the WCS team surveying Hima Malai Sohmat’s gibbon population.

But broom grass is extremely attractive to impoverished farmers: it requires relatively little labour to cultivate, fetches a high price, and is always in demand.

“Unless we’re able to provide them with alternative livelihood options, it will be next to impossible to convince them to give up broom grass cultivation,” said Dewkhaid.

Villagers are also expanding bay leaf plantations at the expense of the community forest, he adds.

This transition to sedentary monocropping threatens to upset the traditional land-tenure system, said A.K. Nongkynrih, a professor of sociology at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, Meghalaya. Khasi custom dictates that land under permanent cultivation belongs to individuals or clans, while any land lying fallow for more than three years reverts to community control. Land that has been burned and cultivated is then generally left to regenerate, reverting back to the community. Plantations, however, remain under private control, leading to a loss of community land and potentially complicating conservation efforts.