Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
wildlife in exchange for their personal greed—to admit that interests invariably compete.
Indeed, these interests almost inevitably compete within each of us as individuals. Most
of us want everything; we just aren't clear about exactly how each decision we make
benefits one interest to the detriment of another.
The point is therefore not that rural agriculturalists in Yunnan or remote pastoralists in
Gansu value only their own economic betterment and do not appreciate wildlife (because
they've not yet lost it); if anything, such people with hands-on experience of native species
usually value them highly. Rather, the point is that neither Confucian optimism nor
tuanjie
allows even the recognition that conflicting desires or competing claims require balancing.
If everybody is simply supposed to “protect wildlife” (while, of course, continuing to get
rich), the crucial function of allocating, adjudicating, and compromising is left void.
NON-HAN PERCEPTIONS
Thus far, I have limited this overview to perceptions among Han Chinese, but, as pointed
out in Chapter 2, western China is geographically (if not politically) dominated by ethnic
minorities. These minorities (
shaoshu minzu
) have distinct histories and traditions, and
most still maintain pastoral lifestyles; thus, we should not expect them to necessarily share
the perceptions of wildlife (and nature generally) that we have explored among the Han.
And indeed, they do not, although the contrast is neither as marked nor as simple-minded
as some observers would believe. Unlike Han culture, with its rich literary tradition, these
largely pastoral cultures have not documented nearly as much in writing, so we are faced
with interpreting their perceptions and values largely through indirect sources. Thus, the
potential for subjectivity in interpretation, already quite high, becomes ever yet greater.
Most Tibetans are both Buddhists and pastoralists. They are thus exposed to religious
teachings on the sanctity of compassion toward all creatures, and also intimately familiar
with both the beauty and the unforgiving limits of the natural world. That Tibetans would
generally feel a kinship with wildlife and an appreciation of natural forces unaffected by
human civilization is therefore not surprising. Indeed, if one were to choose an ethnic
group whose culture and history really did “prime” them
57
for successful wildlife con-
servation, one would be hard pressed to do better than Tibetans. Alas, there has been so
much writing on Tibetans' supposed veneration of nature and their imagined pre-1950s
utopian state of harmony with it,
58
that my task here is principally to modify those myths
rather than to reiterate them. A dose of reality is called for.
Most fundamental is that traditional Tibetan pastoralists, while living by the grace of
natural grass production, largely replaced wild animals with domestic ones. Tibetan pas-
toralists were hardly primitive members of the existing ecological systems; they were in
fact relatively sophisticated users of those systems, albeit with limited ability to engage in
large-scale changes of the native grasslands. At most places and at most times, traditional
Tibetan pastoralism was no doubt sustainable and led to few if any extinctions of native flora
or fauna, but this should not be confused with a naïve view that pastoralism had no effect
whatsoever on wild plants and animals. Tibetans may have held wildlife in high regard, but
they lived by, and for, animal species created solely for the sustenance of people.
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