Villagers embark on a mission to preserve nature
Print Edition
Zhong Junde and his peers stood still and watched closely as an argali sheep wandered in the dense forest before disappearing into the woods.
Thirty years ago, the animal would have met a different fate. Back then, the forest area spanning 38.8 square kilometers in southwest China鈥檚 Sichuan Province was a hunting ground for Zhong and other villagers, where they hunted with crossbows, guns or nooses.
In the 1980s, Xinyi Village, with more than 130 households, was known as a 鈥渉unters鈥 village.鈥 Life was hard in this remote mountain village, where people mainly relied on farming, but most of the hillside land was barren.
鈥淲e lived a bitter life in the past, and hunting could help us earn a few more bucks, and more importantly, supplement our dining tables with meat that was scarce at that time,鈥 said 59-year-old Du Lin, the Party chief of Xinyi, who used to be a hunter himself.
Du recalled killing nine argalis at one time, setting a village record. The villagers also felled big trees for sales while small ones were chopped for firewood. The temperature in the mountains is quite low in the winter, and each household burned an average of 7 tons of firewood every year, which meant one household would deforest some 0.07 hectares of land.
鈥淎s we hunted farther into the forest and logged more, we could see fewer animals,鈥 said Du.
In 1988, China enacted a wildlife conservation law in an effort to strengthen wildlife protection. But it was not easy for the villagers to bid farewell to their traditional way of life, and people were initially reluctant to change. Zhong was sentenced to seven years in prison in the early 1990s for illegal hunting.
Deforestation also peaked around that time, and nature鈥檚 revenge soon followed. In 1992, a once-in-a-century flood hit the village, ravaging many households.
The natural calamity rang the alarm bell for the locals, and it prompted them to stop logging and poaching activities that were wreaking havoc on the environment.
鈥淚f the animals were extinct due to our hunting, how could our future generations know about the species like giant panda or argali?鈥 Zhong, now 60, said.
Today, the villagers have embarked on a new mission of preserving nature, years after they laid down their guns.
They have switched to other sources of livelihood such as animal breeding, beekeeping and herb cultivation. The village now has access to electricity supply, and people use electric heaters instead of firewood for heating.
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