Geography Reference
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might therefore have incentive to protect their habitat) is plausible. If the value obtained
from small-scale exploitation of adult male musk deer exceeds that obtained from degrad-
ing their habitat (and the costs of excluding nonlocal free riders are not too high), these
incentives might be mobilized to simultaneously provide musk deer habitat, a culturally
meaningful product, and a bit of local economic development. For this to occur, genuine
community-based management, with rigidly enforced boundaries, community-based
monitoring,
11
and mutually agreed-upon limitations, must develop.
Chiru probably have only a slightly lower biological ability to sustain human harvest
than do musk deer.
12
They can, at least locally, attain extremely high densities, often roam-
ing in groups that number in the thousands. However, although shahtoosh is obscenely
expensive and has a cultural history of its own (as does small-scale use and trade by
Tibetan pastoralists), it is strictly a luxury item. Its cultural value is restricted to a very
few, and its disappearance from commerce would cause little suffering. Most critically,
most chiru populations are migratory, with their travels taking them hundreds of kilome-
ters between calving and wintering areas. Property rights to a chiru population would be
almost impossible to establish. If one human community elected to reduce disturbance
to wintering chiru in order to benefit from selling shahtoosh, its efforts could easily be
thwarted by another community that did nothing for chiru but happened to be closer
to a migratory route or calving area. Solving the free-rider problem on the enormous
expanses of the Tibetan Plateau—and thus effectively limiting harvest to sustainable
levels—would seem to be impossible. Together, these factors argue against legitimizing
commercial trade in shahtoosh.
Yet a third set of circumstances is faced by the Asiatic black bear. Bear gall is also a
culturally and economically valuable product. Bears occupy an intermediate place be-
tween musk deer and chiru in their home range size and locational predictability. They
require far more habitat than do musk deer, but are not migratory like chiru. They are also
biologically much less capable of sustaining added human mortality than either musk
deer or chiru, equilibrating only when offtake rates are modest. Also unlike musk deer,
the commercial product of interest is produced just as much by adult females as by adult
males. In bears, the survival rate of adult females dominates population dynamics, but
females too would be vulnerable in a commercial hunt aimed at obtaining gall. Finally,
unlike solitary musk deer or high-elevation-specializing chiru, bears do well in captivity,
and gall from their bladders can be obtained repeatedly. Thus, as current Chinese policy
contends, there is no case for legitimizing a commercial harvest of free-ranging bears
for their gall. The probability that wild bear habitat could be maintained from incentives
to profit from wild gall is outweighed by the difficulties of assigning property rights to
bears as well as the likelihood that such a harvest would result in local extirpations. If
bear gall is to continue as a legitimate part of traditional Chinese medicine (and cannot
be replaced by artificial substitutes), bear farming—with the welfare of bears improved
to the degree possible—appears to be the best strategy.
In order for a system based partly on consumptive use to work, the price per animal
must be high enough to justify incurring the opportunity costs of maintaining the species'
habitat, but not so high that poaching or otherwise subverting the system will be so at-
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