SPECIES STORIES - Wildlife Conservation in China: Preserving the Habitat of China's Wild West - page 123

perhaps most critically, because local residents had no legal right to any economic benefits
from musk deer inhabiting the mountains in which they grazed their livestock, they had no
economic incentive to intercede in the illicit killing or smuggling. In fact, given historical
enmities among the different ethnic groups and the reputation these itinerant Hui and Salar
agriculturalists had for being armed and dangerous, locals would have had ample reason to
give them a wide berth. Thus, the system in place all but guaranteed that musk deer popula-
tions would be reduced to very low levels, perhaps even to extirpation.
In the dramatic decline of musk deer, at least in primarily pastoral areas, we have a
failure that is almost entirely one of policy: the biological and technical facets of the
problem provide no reason to expect such a tragic outcome. Why should the demise of
musk deer in western China have been avoidable? First, musk deer pose no direct conflict
for pastoralists. As small-bodied, selective feeders, musk deer can potentially inhabit
brushy and forested hills alongside domestic livestock with minimal forage competition.
Pastoralists are more than willing to complain about anything that makes their earning a
living off livestock yet more difficult, but the presence of musk deer is unlikely to have
been one. True, extensive reduction of understory plants caused by excessive livestock
grazing would come at the expense of musk deer, so that a trade-off between high live-
stock populations and healthy musk deer populations would have existed. But—had there
been institutions to allow its realization—the economics of growing musk deer would
likely have made it beneficial for pastoralists to reduce pressure on their habitat from their
domestic herds in exchange for benefiting from the presence of musk deer.
Second, it is possible to extract musk from adult males without killing the animal.
This is accomplished routinely in captive situations, and at least experimentally in a wild
setting. 19 It might therefore be possible to develop systems in which male musk deer
were captured, milked for their musk, and then released back into the wild, possibly to
live (and produce musk again) another year. The long-term biological effects of such a
management option would have to be considered. (Because it has never been tried on a
large-scale basis, no research has been initiated on the topic.) Perhaps more problematic
than the possible adverse biological effects of yearly capture and musk extraction would
be the logistical difficulties of capturing the animals without injury. A research study at
Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal showed that live capture is feasible, but whether it
could be routinely undertaken by local villagers without extensive training is less certain. 20
Although it is not difficult to determine where the animals are likely to be, safely herding
them into a situation in which they can be handled gently is another matter entirely.
However, musk deer appear capable of achieving reasonably high densities, and doubt-
less have the reproductive capacity to respond quickly to moderate levels of human-added
mortality. If a harvest could be restricted to adult males only, musk deer populations
could sustain even higher off-take rates. If achievable on the ground, the demographic
effect of killing, for example, 40 percent of all adult males over 1 year old in any given
year would have been biologically inconsequential. Thus, even had there been no way to
avoid killing, and even had some killing involved females, a considerable harvest would
have been biologically sustainable.
Finally, although the territorial nature of musk deer breeding systems no doubt func-