- Illegal logging is driving the loss of forest that poses the biggest threat to rare hornbill species in the Eastern Himalayan forests of India’s Arunachal Pradesh state.
- Hunting of the hornbills for their casques and meat was previously a major threat, but has been largely defused through a conservation program that engages the indigenous Nyishi community.
- The Papum Reserve Forest in which the birds are found doesn’t have the same protections as India’s national parks, and suffers from logging activity that goes largely unchecked by authorities.
- Indigenous activists working to protect the forest and its wildlife have come under attack from illegal loggers.
On a wet August afternoon in 2015, Jorjo Tana Tara, 48, a member of the indigenous Nyishi community and an anti-logging activist, discovered illegal loggers and poachers at a large salt lick that often hosts elephants from nearby Pakke Tiger Reserve and Kaziranga National Park in the town of Lower Seijosa. The town lies on the border between the remote Northeast Indian states of Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in a region that is popular for its tea and extraordinary biodiversity.
Tara said he had just started recording video of the scene when “a bullet whirred past my temple.” The distress in his voice was apparent as he recalled the event over the phone. “I had my licensed gun with me and fired back two rounds,” he said. “They immediately fled as they were not expecting any retaliation. Whenever I think of that day, I feel really scared for myself and for my family.”
This was the second of four such attacks on Tara. But he considers it the price he must pay for daring to take on the powerful illegal logging “mafia” of Northeast India, whose activities are fast emerging as one of the primary forces behind the deforestation of the Eastern Himalayan region.
Tara lives in Seijosa, a village located just outside Papum Reserve Forest, a roughly 1,000-square-kilometer (390-square-mile) area of rainforest that is one of the last vestiges of the great hornbill (Buceros bicornis) and the wreathed hornbill (Rhyticeros undulatus). The reserve forest is part of the 980,000-km2 (378,000-mi2) Eastern Himalayan biodiversity hotspot that unpublished research indicates is home to South Asia’s largest contiguous forested region and subtropical forests that are father from the equator than anywhere else in the world. Dozens of major rivers and hundreds of minor ones originate in these forests, providing ecosystem services and climate regulation for millions of people.
For administrative purposes, India’s government-managed forests are divided into three categories: protected areas, reserve forests, and unclassed state forests. In general, protected areas, which include national parks, tiger reserves and wildlife sanctuaries, are granted more protection than other forest categories. Despite not having the same protection under law as national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, research shows reserve forests and unclassed state forests often house the same levels of biodiversity as do protected areas, and the large-scale loss of their forests stands to threaten the survival of wildlife populations as well as intensify flooding events.
Threat to wildlife and livelihoods
Papum Reserve Forest contains one the few remaining areas of low-elevation forest in the region and is considered among the best remaining nesting areas in South Asia for three hornbill species: the great hornbill, the wreathed hornbill and the oriental pied hornbill (Anthracoceros albirostris). On any given evening at Seijosa, dozens of wreathed hornbills can be seen as they fly into the tall trees to roost for the night.
Hornbills are cavity nesters, and depend on mature trees with large holes to lay their eggs and raise their offspring. However, tall, mature trees are also prized by loggers. The IUCN lists the great hornbill as vulnerable and considers the logging of large trees a primary cause of the species’ decline. In India, the three hornbill species are conferred the highest degree of protection under the Wildlife Protection Act.
“The loss of hornbill populations due to deforestation is slow and insidious but will eventually lead to the decline and ultimately local extirpations,” said Aparajita Datta, a wildlife ecologist at the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) and co-chair of the IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group, who has worked in the state of Arunachal Pradesh since 1995. “I have already seen it happen in a few areas that had hornbills two decades ago. If left unchecked and if all larger landscapes lose their forests, the hornbills will persist only in the few remaining patches of [protected areas].”
Logging isn’t the only human pressure driving hornbills toward extinction. Hunting of the birds is also common around Papum. The Nyishi community, for example, has long incorporated hornbills in their cultural practices, with hornbill behavior even inspiring some of their folk songs. They’ve also traditionally hunted the birds for their large, ornate beaks, which are worn ornamentally as headgear called pudum. Hornbills are also hunted for their meat.
However, while hornbill hunting is still prevalent in other parts of the state, the Nyishi community of the Seijosa area has largely abandoned the practice and many residents are now stewards of hornbill conservation through the Hornbill Nest Adoption Program facilitated by the Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department, Ghora-Aabhe Society and NCF.
“The program has been effective in bringing greater awareness and support from diverse groups,” Datta said. “Many Nyishi people and other Arunachalis have donated to the program. There is a lot of pride regarding the fact that the region around the Pakke [Tiger Reserve] is known as a hornbill haven. Hunting in the area for hornbills by locals is non-existent now.”
What still persists, though, is the threat posed by logging. Datta warns that even if deforestation is successfully tackled in the Arunachal Pradesh’s protected forests, the continued loss of habitat outside their bounds threatens the future of the hornbills and other forest-dependent wildlife.
“Hornbills are large mobile birds that move over large areas,” Datta said. “For their population to sustain and grow, they need expansive forested landscapes, and forests limited to the confines of just [protected areas] won’t suffice.”
Datta said she and her team found 37 hornbill nest trees in a section of Papum Reserve Forest near Seijosa. In a peer-reviewed, yet-to-be published study pre-released via BioRxiv, Datta and other researchers found that 35% of the forest surrounding 29 of these trees was lost between 2011 and 2019. (Disclosure: Chintan Sheth, a co-author of this story, is the lead author of the study.)
Over the past decade, extensive illegal logging has led to the loss of more than 20% of the reserve’s forest cover, according to the study. Satellite data and imagery show this loss has continued into 2020, with what appear to be logging roads snaking ever deeper into old-growth rainforest.
According to the findings of the BioRxiv study, an uptick in logging after 2015 coincided with the introduction of mechanized chainsaws and hired workers from Assam. Reports of trucks transporting timber out of Papum under the cover of night and along new routes also increased.
“In addition, with the construction of new roads, the continuation of these illegal activities to newer areas in the higher northern parts of the [reserve forest], deeper inside Arunachal Pradesh, is also being facilitated and is a threat to the long-term status of this important forest area for both people and wildlife,” the study says.
Another effect of logging activity has been the loss of accessible timber for small-scale construction in the local community.
“To construct a Nam or a traditional Nyishi home, we need Tokko [Livistona jenkinsiana] leaves, cane, bamboo and timber,” Tara said. “Also, one of the way many of my people survive is by selling small cane chairs and baskets across the border in Assam. [But] because of the illegal logging, they are not able to find the raw materials for this either.”
Nyishi community members practice wet rice small-scale shifting (jhum) cultivation in addition to making and selling handicrafts to survive. But because of severe weather events in recent decades, such as the 2004 floods that devastated the region and washed away much of its arable land, many Nyishi residents are now unable to farm and have been forced to turn to one of the last lucrative industries in the area: logging.
“For many people here, the only way they can earn even a little money is by working the chainsaws or helping in loading timber onto trucks,” Tara said. “They don’t do it because they want to, it is because they have no other choice.”
The logging ban that wasn’t
In 1996 the Supreme Court of India took control of the country’s forestland, and mandated that all “forest activities” required permission from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC). But while the ban helped protect forests in some parts of India, critics say it went largely unheeded and unenforced in Northeast India.
Between 2001 and 2018, Arunachal Pradesh lost more than 3% of its tree cover, according to satellite data from the University of Maryland visualized on Global Forest Watch. Neighboring Assam state, which lies immediately to the south of Arunachal Pradesh and Papum, lost nearly 9%, the data show. Research indicates Assam’s Sonitpur and Udalguri districts, which are near Papum Forest Reserve, have been hit particularly hard, losing 539 km2 (208 mi2) of forest between 1994 and 2018 — the highest rate of deforestation in the country.
These districts were also the site of a civil conflict between the Indian government and the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), an armed separatist group that sought the creation of a sovereign nation for the Bodo people. Between 1992 and 2001, 1,262 civilians, 167 Indian security personnel and 375 NDFB members were killed through shootings and bombings. Even after a faction of the NDFB surrendered to the Indian government in 2003, sporadic violence and logging still persist.
Papum and the community forests of Seijosa were logged for fuel needed to finance the conflict in Assam. The Arunachal Pradesh state government says it is too poorly equipped to prevent illegal logging, which has continued unabated for the past two decades.
Even though there has been a semblance of resolution to the ethnic conflict since the turn of the century, sources visiting the area in 2018 say that illegal logging was still prolific, with dozens of trucks transporting timber into Assam each day. Reports describe timber continuing on from Assam to markets elsewhere in India and abroad.
In early 2019, a truck carrying logs worth 400,000 rupees ($5,700 at the time) was seized by the state’s forest department near the border town of Seijosa. According to Tara, this was just a drop in the bucket compared to the number of trucks allowed to pass without any security checks. Tired of the government’s inaction and suspecting complicity, in March 2019 he filed a case at the National Green Tribunal (NGT), an appellate court created to deal with environmental crime across India, against the MoEF&CC and the Union of India, under which the Forest Department functions.
In August 2019, the NGT noted that measures taken by Arunachal Pradesh’s Forest Department to reduce illegal logging were “grossly inadequate” and failed to enforce the law. It directed the department to take urgent steps to protect not just the trees but the unique biological diversity within the state. It recommended that the administration identify hotspots, design a strategic plan to “curb the menace,” enhance the strength of enforcement staff, and collaborate with the forest department of Assam.
The Arunachal Pradesh Forest Department did not respond to repeated inquiries from Mongabay about the state’s plans to curb illegal logging. Adding to the woes of conservationists and environmental activists is another government-sanctioned plan to construct a 49-km (30-mi) road connecting the towns of Seijosa and Bhalukpong. Critics say that building the road will destroy hundreds of hectares of forest and fragment contiguous habitat, which could affect the movement of wildlife, including endangered tigers and elephants. Activists are also concerned about another road recently completed by the North East Council (dubbed the “NEC road”) that bisects Papum Reserve Forest and connects Seijosa to areas in the north. It passes through mid-elevation forests, and conservationists worry that if efforts aren’t taken to curb logging, the road’s presence may lead to deforestation of biodiverse, mountainous habitats that have been inaccessible until now.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how disturbing and destroying ecosystems can have disastrous consequences on human life. Even locally, Assam’s Sonitpur district has experienced outbreaks of malaria that have been associated with deforestation.
Meanwhile, despite the 24-year-old government ban and last year’s NGT order, logging persists. The nationwide lockdown to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 has also increased tensions between Tara’s volunteer group of conservationists and illegal loggers.
“Loggers are trying desperately to move logs of trees that were felled before the lockdown,” Tara said. “This has become harder for them but they still want to make money even in these times. Only two weeks ago several loggers fled after some of my team members spotted them while trying to transport the logs.”
In January this year, Tara says he was yet again targeted by the illegal logging mafia, this time at the receiving end of a physical assault. According to Tara, he was driving back to Seijosa from Assam when he was accosted by several loggers who questioned him and threatened to kill him if he did not stop his activism. In the scuffle that ensued, Tara’s wrist was injured. Undeterred, Tara and his group of indigenous environmental activists intend to not only continue trying to stop illegal logging near their hometowns but also across their state, with plans to mount a 1,000-km (620-mi) journey along the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas in Arunachal Pradesh to survey deforestation hotspots after COVID-19 conditions improve.
Tara said his cause began in 2014 when his 8-year-old son questioned what would become of their community if the logging continued, and asked him why he wasn’t doing anything to stop it. Toward the end of our phone interview, Tara became audibly emotional, speaking of his own childhood when he roamed the forests of Papum with his parents and “the trees had crowns as long as 35 meters [115 feet], elephants, tigers and other wildlife could be spotted easily.”
He said he believes it will take many centuries to undo the damage being inflicted on Papum’s forests. As our connection crackles with static, Tara says, “I have decided that ’til I have my last breath, I will preserve and conserve … the gift of Mother Nature to human beings and make sure a forest remains for the future generations who are born in Arunachal Pradesh.”
Sibi Arasu is an independent journalist based in Bengaluru. He tweets @sibi123. Chintan Sheth is an independent geographer and ecologist working in Arunachal Pradesh, he tweets @blueczkfox.
Banner image of a great hornbill by Bernard Spragg via Wikimedia Commons (CC 1.0).
Editor’s note: This story was powered by Places to Watch, a Global Forest Watch (GFW) initiative designed to quickly identify concerning forest loss around the world and catalyze further investigation of these areas. Places to Watch draws on a combination of near-real-time satellite data, automated algorithms and field intelligence to identify new areas on a monthly basis. In partnership with Mongabay, GFW is supporting data-driven journalism by providing data and maps generated by Places to Watch. Mongabay maintains complete editorial independence over the stories reported using this data.
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