The New Nation - Internet Edition

Social rules about dealing with lions in Niger

Joao Pedro Galhano Alves

It will be a major problem, if the lion vanishes-goes a popular saying in Moli Haoussa-Gorma village in Niger. Beliefs such as this are significant in making the W National Park amongst the rare strongholds of the African lion. At a time when the lion population is declining alarmingly in Africa, W National Park is haven to 200 lions, according to a 2001 estimation by the ecologist Mossa Alou.

Moli Haoussa, among the few African villages where human beings co-exist with the carnivore, is located 15 km from the park's boundary in Tamou Wildlife Reserve.

W National Park is spread over 10,000 sq km in Niger, Burkina Faso and Benin.

Alou estimates that 70 of the 200 lions in the park are found on the Niger side. Local people, however, have higher figures. They say there are about 100 lions on the Niger side.

Besides, there are two residual populations of about 20 lions each. Wild herbivores include elephants, buffaloes and antelopes. The reserve also has a fair number of primates. Ecologists say that the national park's savannah ecosystem maintains a "total biodiversity state".

At the core of such biodiversity is a complex relationship between human societies and nature. Let's go back to Moli Haoussa to understand the intricacies of this relationship. It's a village of 400-odd people, most of them from the Gourmantché tribe. Some of the village's inhabitants are from the Hausa community; there are herders from the Peul community, besides.

Agriculture in Moli Haoussa is mostly for self-consumption, though some crops are sold. Cattle grazing is free in the savannah and herders from the Peul community graze bovines for sale in markets. The villagers also graze some goat and sheep and a few donkeys.

Hunting is strictly with bows and arrows and only for self-consumption. More importantly, people are selective when they hunt, taking care not to upset the carrying capacity of the environment.

The villagers never hunt lions, fearing reprisal from the animals' "spiritual beings".

The big cats are considered a heritage. The people of Moli Haoussa believe that the

lion's spiritual power pervades the village's surroundings, and is a source of power

for them. The lion is regarded as a "guardian animal". The animal is a justice-

maker and its presence is said to discourage outsiders from coming to steal cattle

from Moli Haoussa

Wildlife, particularly the lion, are recurrent subjects of traditional art. For the Gourmantché-as well as for the other groups-animals, plants or minerals have spiritual beings, the fuhaly who follow and guide them, exercise powers, and regulate natural and human relationship. The villagers believe that "one can't hunt many animals of a herd, because its fuhaly would take revenge".

The fuhaly of the sage-like lion, found in the animal's parts, is said to cast a beneficial influence. So lion parts are used as ingredients of gris-gris, amulet thought to ward off evil. People of Moli Haoussa obtain lion parts from corpses found in the forest. Lion parts are also used in African traditional medicine, mainly for lung diseases and rheumatism. But such uses never lead the villagers to poach, since they usually gather the parts from dead lions.

The Gourmantché believe that they are linked to the lions by an old alliance made between a Gourmantché royal family and a lion clan. They use lion-like facial tattoos and file their teeth to show their identification with the big cat.

Newborns are fed a piece of dry meat from a dead lion's heart to link them with the species.

Gourmantché do not hunt lions because they do not consider carnivores as food. Hunters from the community, in fact, regard the lion as a fellow hunter, a companion. Pugmarks and other signs are deemed as the lions' "advice" when the Gourmantché go out hunting.

The reverence for the lion has fostered a deep understanding of what western science describes as lion morphology, biology, ethology and ecology. The Gourmantché have detailed knowledge of the lions' reproductive, sexual, social, affective, hunting and territorial behaviours, and the animals' links with other species.

They believe that the animals communicate with sounds, postures and other signs. The understanding of the villagers seems remarkably akin to that of any so-called sophisticated ecologist. They believe that the lion prevents epidemics in herbivores by killing sick animals. So, the saying in Moli Haoussa is "if the lion vanishes, there will be too many herbivores".

The lions are said to regulate herbivore populations, thus avoiding vegetation erosion and reducing crop losses. Peul herders, for examples, say that lions eliminate excess wild herbivores making sure that natural pastures are not eroded. This 'ecological' understanding is secured by the belief that "the lion's genie haunts any villager who kills the animal".

In recent times, inhabitants of Moli Haoussa have come to attribute another value to the lion. They consider the animal a tourist attraction and an income sources: some villagers get seasonal employment as guides in the park and some others get jobs as watchmen.

Encounters between Moli Haoussa inhabitants and lions are frequent. In such situations, the villagers repeat a sequence of sounds and postures in to keep safety. Hausa cultivators look the lion straight into its eyes and shout "uah, uah". If they happen to have a stick, they beat it on a trunk, then move back. They say that this makes the lion lie low or go away.

Peul herders have a more confrontational behaviour, quite understandable since they must keep theirs as well their cattle's safety. They run towards lions screaming and knocking their sticks on the ground. Most Gourmantché do not react much when they encounter lions, just walk on, or let the lions pass.

On an average 2-4 per cent of the villagers' cows and 7 per cent goats and sheep fall prey to lions every year. Sometimes a lion gets into the village, jumps on the brushwood protection fence of a house and takes a sheep or goat away. Defences against such attacks are village dogs and fences. When lions kill grazers in the jungle, the villagers try and retrieve the carcasses as soon as possible to make sure that the animal does not develop a taste for cattle. There is no indemnity for cattle loss and the villagers feel that compensation would improve matters.

Lion attacks on humans are rare but clashes are often deadly. In 2000, a Peul herder survived a hand-to-hand fight with a lion, which attacked when his fellow herders tried to frighten the lion away from a cow. The park's director Bello Nakata points out that "lion respects humans. But that does not mean he fears humans". Between 1989 and 2004, only three people were killed by lions. Park officials attribute these attacks to an old lion that "had gone mad".

It's not just the lion. People of Moli Haoussa and other nearby villages respect large herbivores as well. They believe that wild and domestic herbivores species complement each other in vegetation regulation. They also regard the wild herbivores as tourist attraction.

But it's not always an easy relation. According to experts, large wild herbivores and birds destroy about 8 per cent crops. To avoid excessive losses, inhabitants use innocuous techniques to frighten the creatures away. They keep regular vigil, deploy scarecrows, fire lighting, battery torches, and fence vegetable gardens.

In contrast to traditional hunters, professional poachers have links with large international networks. Most of these poachers come from neighbouring countries. They employ both traditional and modern weapons to kill large fauna, though it's for a lion to be poached. Commercial poaching has not reached alarming level yet, but must be checked.

In the past, controversial wildlife policies have led to people being violently expelled from the park area, without any compensation. At present park officials have few means to support villagers, even if they so desire. Inhabitants of Moli Haoussa and other villages in the vicinity of W National Park, are largely on good terms with the park authorities. Nevertheless, there are latent conflicts. Villagers complain of restrictions on their activities and lack of social development programmes.

In spite of their environmental richness, the societies in the vicinity of W National live in difficult conditions, deprived from contemporary facilities and afflicted with nutritional scarcity. Legalisation giving joint control of the park to forest authorities and local inhabitants can improve matters. Tourism can supplement the incomes for local inhabitants, but mass tourism should be avoided in the interests of biodiversity conservation.

Social security programmes should be centred on providing food security to the people of villages in the vicinity of W National Park. But these programmes should take care to maintain the agrarian land use levels. Natural vegetation cover should be restored in large area around the W National Park. This will allow fauna dispersion and will increase wildlife population and also forest resources for inhabitants of villages around the park.

(CSE/Down To Earth Feature Service, New Delhi India)

Learn to walk lightly

Sunita Narain

In Sikkim, bowing to local protests, the government has cancelled 11 hydro-electric projects. In Arunachal Pradesh, dam projects are being cleared at breakneck speed and resistance is growing. In Uttarakhand last month, 2 projects on the Ganga were put on hold and there is growing concern about the rest. In Himachal Pradesh, dams are so controversial that elections were won where candidates said they would not allow these to be built. Many other projects, from thermal power stations to Greenfield mining, are being resisted. The South Korean giant Posco's iron ore mine, steel plant and port are under fire. The prime minister has promised the South Korean premier the project will go ahead by August. But local people are not listening. They don't want to lose their land and livelihood and do not believe in promises of compensation. In Maharashtra, mango growers are up in arms against the proposed thermal power station in Ratnagiri.

In every nook and corner of the country where land is acquired, or water sourced, for industry, people are fighting even to death. There are wounds. There is violence. There is also desperation. Like it or not, there are a million mutinies today. Like it or not, there will be two million tomorrow. Unless we understand these protests are not just about politically motivated people stirred up by outsiders and competitors to obstruct development.

I have written this before. After I visited Kalinganagar, where villagers died protesting against Tata's project, I wrote this was not about competition or Naxalism. These were poor villagers who knew they did not have the skills to survive in the modern world. They had seen their neighbours displaced, promised jobs and money that never came. They knew they were poor. But they also knew modern development would make them poorer. It was the same in prosperous Goa, where I found village after village fighting against the powerful mining lobby, where people told me they were fed up because mining rejects destroyed their agriculture and dried-up their streams. These were educated, even skilled, people. But they did not want to drive the trucks of the miners. They wanted to till their land. Make money. Live well, if not rich.

This is the nub of the matter: we just cannot believe people, poor or relatively rich, do not want to leave their land, when we promise them jobs. We can only see their wretched poverty. We cannot understand their reason.

This article is not about them, but us. It is clear we need dams, steel plants and thermal power projects. These are key to our need to develop. We know this, and so we refuse to understand them. Used to getting our way, we are working to fast-track our development, through fiat. Our response is two-fold. First, we want to change and weaken environmental regulations in the name of streamlining procedures and providing single-window clearances to industry. Last year, the government, under pressure on environmental safeguards, changed the rules of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) procedures. The idea was to 'cut' red tape and to give fast clearances. There is now pressure to give de-facto clearance to all mining projects that have been given a clearance to prospect for minerals. There are also murmurs about removing thermal projects from environmental clearances. And now, a powerful grouping of real estate movers and shakers are demanding no clearances be required for urban projects---malls, residential areas, whatever.

We also justify this process, saying the institutions that grant clearances are corrupt and incompetent. We do not say these same institutions have been made corrupt because we have promoted procedures for our convenience and access to decision-making. We do not say the EIA is not worth the paper it is written on, or that the consultant is given money by us, not to assess a project but to get it cleared. We also do not demand these institutions must be given more staff, more facilities and more ways to do their job.Second, we lose patience. And with it, we are losing our humanity. Today, people are in a dirty war even as we stoop, to stop at nothing to quell the fight. Our tactics are well rehearsed. We first work on the leaders. If we can't buy them, we threaten them. If that fails, we hide behind the might of the state to ensure protest is muzzled.

But what we should realise, fast, is these strategies are not working. Yes, we get our way in some cases, for some time. But what resentment and anger, even hatred, we create, in our own backyard. We must realise these struggles are not 'time-pass movements' (as the slang goes). These are about survival. The fact is in India vast numbers depend on the land, the forests and the water they have in their vicinity for their livelihood.They know once these resources are gone or degraded, they have no way ahead.

This is the environmental movement of the very poor. Here, there are no quick-fix techno solutions in which the real problems can be fobbed off for later. In this environmentalism, there is only one answer: changing the way we do business, with them and with their environment. It will demand we reduce our need and increase our efficiency for every inch of land we need, every tonne of mineral we dig and every drop of water we use. It will demand new arrangements to share benefits with local communities so that they are persuaded to part with their resources for a common development. If we can listen and learn, maybe this environmentalism of the poor may teach not just us, but the entire world, how to walk lightly on earth. Maybe. Just maybe.

(The writer is the editor, Down To Earth Magazine, New Delhi, India)

Ganga expressway hits a roadblock

The Greater Noida-Ballia Ganga Expressway project in Uttar Pradesh has hit a roadblock on the proposed course of alignment of the eight-lane access-controlled highway in three districts of the State.

The Mayawati Government, however, is determined to remove the roadblocks to smoothen the process of completion of the Rs.30,000-crore project. To be constructed on an embankment on the left side of the Ganga, the 1047-km-long expressway will traverse through 16 districts.

With the course of alignment in Farrukhabad, Unnao and Ballia districts proposed by the developer (JP Group) disapproved by the Government, the promoter is likely to be asked to reconsider the alignment proposal. The possibility of acquiring fertile agricultural land has led the Government to suggest a revision of the alignment proposed.

At an official presentation on the Ganga Expressway project in the presence of State Chief Secretary Atul Kumar Gupta on July 17, the exact alignment of the road in the light of the proposed alignment was discussed threadbare. According to official sources, the views of the concerned district magistrates and the officials of Irrigation, PWD, Forest and Environment departments have been sought by the Government. "The Government will rely on the suggestions of the DMs and other officials before deciding on its next move," said a senior official on condition of anonymity.

In Farrukhabad district, a 55-km stretch of the expressway was proposed to be built midway between the Ganga and its tributary, the Ramganga, but in the alignment proposal the road was shown on the banks of the Ganga, official sources said. An official said the opinion of the Farrukhabad District Magistrate and the Irrigation Department (Flood Control wing) has been sought by the Government.

In Shuklaganj town in Unnao district, the course of the highway needed to be shifted away from the course of the river on account of the settlements along its bank. The Unnao DM has been directed to submit his report on the proposal.

At the end point of the expressway in Ballia district, which is 10 km before Manjhi Ghat, the road will merge with National Highway No.19. According to official sources, in the alignment proposal, the expressway was shifted away from NH-19 into the fertile agricultural land. "Since land has to be acquired by the State Government in its role as a facilitator, acquisition of land in that particular stretch in Ballia would have been practically impossible," added the official. He said the proposal has been shot down by the Government.

The Ganga Expressway project has been divided into four individual packages of road sections - Greater Noida to Fatehgarh (Farrukhabad) abut 253 km, Fatehgarh to Dalmau in Rae Bareli district about 305 km, Dalmau to Aurai in Bhadohi district (about 210 km ) and Aurai to Ballia with a length of about 278 km. Construction work in all individual packages will run concurrently.

The course of alignment from Greater Noida to Narora in Bulandshahr district will be on normal embankment, three metres high.

From Narora to Ballia it will be on a embankment , 7.5 metres high, which is proposed to be built along the left bank of the river. The starting point of the road project is in Greater Noida, 10 km from the Taj Expressway.

A service lane along the embankment is also proposed to be built on the left bank of the Ganga.

It will serve as a flood protection measure. About 27,000 hectares of land will be used in the construction of the expressway, of which 15,000 hectares will be used for road work and 12,000 hectares for planned development.

Underpasses for local population will also be built.

(Source: Waterwatch/The Hindu)