Making a living inside a reserve: an interview with village head Zou Huagang

Imagine the paradise-like Panda Village to which Po returns with his father in this year’s hit film Kung Fu Panda 3: a valley with dense forest, floating mist, gushing waterfalls, and verdant mountains. The real-life prototype for the valley is in China’s Dujiangyan Prefecture in Sichuan province.

The valley is a tourist destination listed as part of a UNESCO World Heritage site and an important habitat corridor for endangered giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). The area links the two largest wild panda populations in China, one in the Minshan Mountains and the other in the Qionglai Mountains.

However, despite the area’s significance for panda protection, from the 1950s through the 1980s its economic pillars were timber and forest products, with an annual requirement to produce over 10,000 cubic meters of wood. Then in the late 1990s two things happened to change that: the Longxi-Hongkou National Nature Reserve was set up inside Dujiangyan and China’s central government launched the nationwide Natural Forest Conservation Program. As a result, a logging ban took hold throughout the region.

According to the Fourth National Giant Panda Survey issued in 2015, there are 1,864 wild pandas in China, of which 1,387 live in Sichuan. Eleven of the iconic animals live in the Longxi-Hongkou nature reserve, one of the country’s 67 giant panda reserves, Zhou Hongliang, the reserve’s director, told Mongabay at his office.

The reserve, which covers 320 square kilometers (124 square miles), is also home to other distinctive animal and plant species, such as golden snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus roxellana), takin (Budorcas taxicolor), tufted deer (Elaphodus cephalophus), leopards (Panthera pardus), chestnut-throated partridges (Tetraophasis obscurus), and dove trees (Davidia involucrata).

According to Zhou, the sound natural environment and good air quality mean booming tourism, which has benefitted most locals living near the reserve. “Locals used to be very poor, and since twenty years ago, when Dujiangyan started tourism development, they have gradually gotten richer and richer,” Zhou said. “Now locals have realized they are benefiting from the protected area, so they are starting to proactively join conservation efforts.”

However, there is one exception. Lianhe village, due to its remote location, has yet to benefit from the tourism explosion.

A village of some 470 inhabitants, Lianhe is located within the reserve, about 34 kilometers (21 miles) away from downtown Dujiangyan. It covers a large area of around 286 square kilometers (110 square miles), mainly virgin forest with some secondary growth. Since Longxi-Hongkou reserve was established, most of the village’s forest was classified as strictly prohibited-entry. To earn a living most villagers have resorted to planting houpu (Magnolia officinalis), a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine, in the forest, and kiwi fruit on village farmland.

Last year, a local environmental NGO called the Dujiangyan Nature Protection Association came to help the village try to develop high-end ecotourism. The goal is to enhance the economic development of Lianhe and neighboring villages while encouraging villagers to get involved in the reserve’s affairs. With other partners, the NGO set up a program to offer locals professional training in eco-tourism. So far, some of the other communities have successfully hosted a few nature education tours, but the vision is to eventually conduct backpacking trips and homestays, as well. If the ecotourism program takes off, it is sure to bring significant changes to remote Lianhe village.

In late April, Mongabay spoke with 45-year-old Zou Huagang, a resident of Lianhe who has served as the village head for 18 years, near a village kiwi farm. Zou described the village’s wildlife-protection initiative, villagers’ hopes for the eco-tourism project, and his views on community conservation.

Mongabay: How do local villagers in Lianhe perceive nature conservation?

Zou Huagang: During the beginning phase of the reserve’s establishment, starting in 1997, villagers were not happy with the restrictions preventing them from entering forests where their most productive resources are located. So they still went to the peripheral area outside the strictly prohibited-entry regions to hunt wildlife and collect herbs. Gradually, villagers began to see the reserve’s efforts in helping us get local policy support and in finding development projects from various sources, and the relationship between our village and the reserve smoothed out.

For example, thanks to the reserve, we had a well-paved road constructed to connect with other places. Cultivating houpu in the forest is a major source of income for people. However due to the remoteness and difficult transportation, villagers could hardly make enough profit selling it to market. With the construction of the paved road, we can now easily sell our agriculture products to market.

In the last decade, things started to change significantly since the local community’s income increased by developing some agricultural industries. Our planting industry has expanded to include forest cultivating of some Chinese medicine plants such as houpu, huanglian [(Coptis chinensis)] and chonglou [(Rhizoma paridis)], and we grow some kiwi fruits on our farm area. The annual income per person could amount to 14,000 yuan [($2,135)] in recent years.

In our village, conservation and development are almost not contradictory to each other. We enjoy a cooperative relationship with the reserve, which has assisted us in providing training and guidance programs for a lot of community-development projects.

For example, camera traps set up in our community conservation area have taken shots of quite a number of animals that we hardly ever see. When we show those camera-trap images of beautiful wild animals, our villagers are very excited and even proud of our own conservation efforts.

More importantly, villagers are confident that the nature around our village is the unique resource that we enjoy, which also appeals to outside visitors. So conservation is linked directly to our livelihood for the foreseeable future.

Mongabay: What’s the significance of Lianhe’s community conservation initiative?

Zou Huagang: Due to the special location of Lianhe village inside the reserve, as well as its being the source region that provides drinking water for Dujiangyan, protection of its ecology and environment are keenly important.

In 2014, our village set up a community-conservation program voluntarily, without any government financial support. Our main focus is the peripheral forest [where activities such as herb cultivation and tourism are permitted] of over three square kilometers, up to the strictly prohibited-entry regions, which are habitat for a large number of wildlife. This region will be the key area for developing eco-tourism.

The reserve helped us get some technical and equipment support from outside sources, and we have set up camera traps and conduct regular monthly patrols inside the area for protection and data-gathering purposes.

Mongabay: What’s your plan, as the village head, for Lianhe’s future development?

Zou Huagang: Due to our village’s remoteness, we cannot develop mass tourism as our neighbors living in the tourism area have done. Now we are starting to plan development of eco-tourism because of our close proximity to nature. Thus we can turn our remote location from an initial disadvantage into a strength.

We have different plans for different areas within our village lands. We have laid out a plan for four major areas. One is a conservation area, one is a community residence area open for providing accommodation facilities for tourists, the third is an eco-tourism destination area, and the fourth is planned as an entertainment and amusement area. The functions for the four areas are not contradictory to each other and will not shift in a long-term time frame.

For the agriculture industry, we have set up a cooperative to uplift our brand and promote our kiwi fruits sales directly to a high-end market.

We will enhance our forest-protection efforts, and extend the patrolling assignments to an even larger area, if possible.

Mongabay: Don’t you feel villagers in the tourism area down the valley are more accessible to tourists, and are competitors for you?

Zou Huagang: We are targeting a different market. Eco-tourism is not like mainstream mass tourism. It targets real nature-lovers who want to seek knowledge about the forest and wildlife and get involved in conservation. So basically we are not competitors.

Mongabay: How do you perceive the local community’s attitude toward the future development of eco-tourism?

Zou Huagang: Both our community and outside experts who came have reached a common understanding of the practical situation faced by Lianhe village. We enjoy rich natural resources, but there is no potential to expand agriculture or other industries due to the restriction on plowing lands. We realized that the existing wildlife and plants in the mountains within our village land are our unique resources that can attract tourists.

We are now expecting long-term sustainable development through ecotourism rather than short-term gains.