Background

Mouling National Park, one of the two national parks in Arunachal Pradesh was notified in 1986. Even after two decades of notification, the park lacks a biodiversity inventory and until recently did not have a management plan. The reason of the intactness of the park lies in its remoteness, absence of motorable roads, both in the core as well as the buffer area of the park and the taboo of the Adi tribes and its sub-tribes which prevents them to scale the three peaks, Ganging Mouling, Marrang Mouling and Mouling Sibum. Due to absence of a motorable road, the park’s boundary has been drawn through the aid of existing topo-sheet and aerial survey resulting in straight line segments in mountainous terrain. The Protected Areas (PA) has been carved out of a Unclassed State Forest (USF) and possibilities exist that wide consultation has not been made with the local communities while designing the park. However, it appears that land use rights of the local communities are settled and no park and people conflict exists. The remoteness and pristine nature of the park does not make the park immune to threats. The park is accessible to the local communities and unofficial reports on trade of Kasturi, the Musk deer (Moschus moschiferus) exist. Forests fires are limited but man wild life conflicts due to attacks by Himalayan Black bear (Selenarctos thibetanus) is on the rise. Complete lack of monitoring makes it impossible to assess the extent of these threats.

Objective

Adi tribals of the area are traditional hunters and hunt in the community forest area. Since this community around Mouling National Park is living in remote villages, the only protein supplement which the community can afford is fish and hunt meat. The project documents the level of hunting and its possible impact of the wild mammalian population in the area, so that measures can be planned both for maintaining a healthy biodiversity status of the park and adjoining forest areas and providing alternate sources of protein supplementation to the local community.

Achievements

The survey through the Adi tribal villages has brought out the fact that the national park is home to more than fort eight species of mammals. The work has also highlighted the fact that the Protected Area has been carved out of a USF (Unclassed State Forest) and the local community is still not clear about the park boundaries and requires detailed community consultations to be carried out to address this issue.