People in the Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 513

vironment (Nicholson 1963), especially among outsiders. Imagined icons like the Yeti or
Abominable Snowman of the Himalaya and the Sasquatch or Bigfoot of the North Amer-
ican Cordillera remain part of the mountain wilderness image. Values and perceptions
have changed to the point today that wildlife is seen by many people as an essential and
valued component of the mountain environment. However, this view is not necessarily
shared by mountain people in the Himalaya, East Africa, North American Cordillera,
and New Zealand, where crops and flocks are preyed upon by endemic and introduced
wildlife. The relationships between people and wildlife in the mountains have been and
remain extremely complex.
Paramount among these relationships is the fact that wild animals, fish, birds, and
insects have been, and remain, useful to people as both central and supplementary food
sources throughout the mountain world. Bees, besides producing honey, are essential
to the pollination of some food crops. Other animals, birds, and insects are, of course,
damaging to crops, livestock, and homes. The result has been a favoring of some spe-
cies over others and thereby a reshaping of mountain wildlife by people over time.
Coupled with anthropogenic habitat changes, the effect has been to reduce the popula-
tions of most large animals, fish, and birds, with the result that dependence on wildlife
as a food source in the mountains has declined through time. Niche activities such as
sport hunting and fishing, bird watching, wildlife photography, and ecotourism now take
place in some mountain areas, providing livelihoods for some. Nonconsumptive valuing
of wildlife is today taking precedence in most mountain regions, with the result that
protection, habitat restoration, population rehabilitation, and reintroductions are com-
mon. Ironically, the protection and restoration of mountain wildlife owes much to two
“great white hunters” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Theodore
Roosevelt and Jim Corbett, both instrumental in the parks and protected areas move-
ment discussed in Chapter 12. The relationships between mountain vegetation, wildlife,
and people are so closely linked to livelihoods that they are discussed in more detail in
the following section.
Livelihoods of Mountain People
Early livelihood systems were complex at the household level, as gathering, hunting,
subsistence agriculture, and animal husbandry were practiced in combination, utilizing
the diversity of ecosystems and microenvironments present. At the community level, the
system was uniform in the sense that most households used similar combinations.
Subsequently, there has been a gradual transformation to greater simplicity at the
household level and diversification/specialization at the community level. That is, more
households engage in fewer livelihood activities and, within communities, a greater di-
versity of livelihoods is present through specialization. However, some mountain house-
holds have retained a complex livelihood system through tradition, limited opportunit-
ies, gender and age role differentiation within the household, and increased economic
migration. It has been primarily over the past 400 years, with industrialization, coloni-
alism, commercialism, and tourism that the livelihood diversity now present has deve-
loped, though this varies among mountain regions.
Livelihood diversification in the Alps, through the rise of industry, commercial agri-
culture, and tourism, has been taking place since the early nineteenth century, initially