South Asia: Pakistan and the Himalayan States - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 210

Forests and wildlife quickly vanished. The threat of
tigers was replaced by the threat of landslides.
Road construction has also delivered sweeping
cultural change. T Truck routes funnel in new products and
new ideas. They are also conductors for increased prosti-
tution and the diffusion of AIDS. Commercialization, re-
source extraction, and mass tourism have effectively
devastated natural and human landscapes to the point
that the integrity of traditional human-environmental
relationships has been destroyed.
The Himalayas function as the water tank of Asia. It
has the highest runoff of any mountain range, providing
water for one-tenth of the world' s population. However,
torrential rivers invite dam construction to generate
hydropower for electricity and water for irrigation. Since
the 1950s, dams have proliferated, particularly in the
upper Ganges and Indus tributary areas. Dam construction
destroys forests, degrades land, and displaces mountain
and hill people, forcing them to move to other already
stressed regions. Pakistan' s Mangla Dam, completed in
1967, receives so much silt and debris from the Jhelum
that its operational life has been cut from 100 to 50 years.
Soil erosion is accelerated by development projects
and general overuse of natural resources. Rivers run
brown with silt, precious topsoil needed to sustain crop
yields. Some 300 cubic meters of topsoil annually wash
from the Nepal Himalaya to the plains of the Ganges and
Brahmaputra below . The stain of Himalayan silt can be
seen as far as 400 miles (645 km) from shore in the Bay
of Bengal.

In 1970, a huge storm raged over the great mountain
Nanda Devi (25,650 feet, or 7,695 m). T Tons of earth,
boulders, and trees crashed down slopes. A tributary of
the Ganges rose more than 60 feet (18 m). Six road
bridges, 24 buses, and some 600 homes were swept away ,
and nearly 200 people were killed.
Mountain dwellers were stunned at the magnitude
of this disaster. Realizing that vast forest areas had been
cleared by commercial companies, they were determined
to fight back and save their environment. In the north of
India' s Uttar Pradesh state, where leopards and tigers
once prowled the forests, a group of women literally held
on to trees as loggers wielded their axes. This grass roots
movement became known as Chipko Andolan , meaning
“the movement to embrace the trees.'' As women in other
areas engaged in “tree-hugging'' protests, the Chipko
Movement drew international attention and became
instrumental in the formulation of India' s conservation
policy . Although village preservation groups have be-
come ubiquitous, population and other pressures limit
their effectiveness.

TOURISM
T Tourism and other forms of commercialization have had
far-reaching impacts. The tourist count on the slopes of
Mt. Everest alone was 18,000 before the 2001 political
crisis in Nepal reduced that number. T Tourism is a double-
edged sword. It does generate revenue and employ
significant numbers of locals. On the other hand, tourist
facilities and activities add trash and pollute land and
water, trample delicate vegetation, and place even greater
demand on wood supplies than local populations.
Villagers strip forests to provide hot water for “needy''
tourists. T Tourists deface rocks and religious sites, and
some even go so far as to steal the inscribed stones of sa-
cred mani walls. The high Himalayas have been termed
“The loftiest garbage dump in the world.” T Tourism also
compromises cultures. As noted above, this is why
Bhutan has imposed strictures on its tourism industry .
One people to be drastically affected by tourism are
the Sherpas of Nepal. When Sir Edmund Hillary became
the first Westerner to ascend to the top of Mt. Everest
from Nepal in 1953, he was lauded throughout the
world. Standing in the shadow of his glory was a Sherpa
named T Tenzing Norgay . The Hillary expedition is now
known as the Hillary-Norgay expedition.
Although Sherpas are famed for their mountain-
climbing abilities, they are not traditionally mountain
climbers. Seeking new pastures for their yak herds, their

LOGGING
Forestry has exacted the greatest toll from the ecosystem.
Large-scale cutting commenced in the latter nineteenth
century when the British hauled off 6.5 million railway
ties from one of the world' s finest deodar forests. Since
1950, logging, agriculture, and urbanization have de-
stroyed nearly half of the forest cover in the Indian Hi-
malayas alone.
Throughout the Himalayas, original village forests
are so degraded that people (mostly women) must
spend hours every few days to find and gather firewood.
Imagine carrying at least 50 pounds of wood on your
back, secured by a single wood-fiber strap around your
forehead, trudging barefoot to get home to cook a meager
breakfast for the family , do household chores, feed the
animals, and do farm work. Every year, a Nepalese
family spends at least two months' worth of time acquir-
ing firewood.