In the West we like to humanise our animals, writes Diane Southam. Cuddly little creatures with human traits and foibles pervade our children’s stories. We take our domestic pets along to beauty parlours and even psychiatrists. 

Inuit Eskimos also believe in the existence of an animal-human connection. They claim that animals understand human speech and credit the bear with having a human soul. The similarity, however, ends there. 

When it comes to being hunted for sport, used in medical experiments or slaughtered in the abattoir animals in the West are de-invested of  ‘human’ feelings such as sensitivity to pain or awareness of death. The Inuit, on the other hand, believe that if a dead animal is treated with disrespect it will not return to the earth to be hunted.

For the Inuit and many of the 300 million tribal peoples around the world, besides being a primary source of food, animals exert a powerful spiritual presence.   Animal spirits are alleged to accompany the Shaman on his or her ecstatic flight around the cosmos. A natural code of behaviour exists in the wild, which involves never killing more than is needed for survival, and sharing the kill with others. 

This ‘respectful’ form of hunting has nevertheless managed to upset some wildlife conservationists because the animals killed by tribal people are sometimes classified as endangered species. Demands that indigenous people stop hunting can often mean an end to their entire way of life.  There are many reasons why a species of wildlife becomes endangered – the most common being the destruction or pollution of its natural habitat, careless, unsustainable hunting and industrial fishing.

Unfortunately for the tiger its legendary power has made it one of the most prized raw ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine. In ancient China the stripes on a tiger’s face were interpreted as a symbol for ‘Wang’ – meaning King, and it remains a widespread belief that a boy born in the Year of the Tiger has the power to ward off evil. TRAFFIC, the world wide fund for nature’s trade monitoring arm estimated that 27 million preparations claiming to contain tiger were recorded in trade statistics over a two year period. Demands by Western conservationists that Chinese communities switch to other forms of medicine have sometimes been construed as culturally arrogant and offensive to practitioners of Chinese medicine whose co-operation is essential if public opinion is to be swayed in favour of preserving the tiger.

Over zealous wildlife conservationists have come in for some heavy criticism in recent years from organisations like SURVIVAL – which was established in 1969 to protect the rights of indigenous peoples. One of SURVIVAL’S concerns is that tribal people often get a raw deal when national parks are set up to protect wildlife. Denied the right to graze their herds or hunt food they can become ‘poachers’ overnight on the very land their ancestors have hunted for hundreds of years.   The Twa pygmies in Zaire now live on handouts at the edge of Kahuzi-Biega Park – their tribal home for generations. SURVIVAL claims that in practice, the conservation movement has subjected tribal peoples to state or corporate control.  In a newsletter it asked how long would it be before conservationists start using slogans like ‘Pandas Not People?’

While indigenous peoples clearly risk becoming an endangered species themselves they are also, at times, guilty of hunting unsustainably. Killing a pregnant animal, for example, can jeopardise not only the future of the animal species in question, but also the food supply of the tribe. 

‘Symbiosis,’ According to Daisaku Ikeda, President of SGI ‘which means living and prospering together, has become the key word of our time, whether in reference to relationships among nations or between humankind and nature.’

SGI supports the Earth Charter Initiative whose mission is:

‘to promote the transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework that includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace.’

A statement issued by the WWF (World Wildlife Foundation) of principles on Indigenous Peoples and Conservation urged that ‘Indigenous peoples and conservation organisations should be natural allies in the struggle to conserve both a healthy natural world and healthy human societies.’  It advanced the view that indigenous people make the best conservationists.  

Its CAMPFIRE PROJECT (Communal Areas Management Programme for Indigenous Resources) launched some years ago to provide a framework for managing Zimbabwe’s wildlife resources including eland, buffalo, impala, crocodile, ostrich and elephant, proved to be something of a success. Under the programme local councils managed the wildlife that was raised on communally owned lands and collected the revenue from controlled hunting and selling meat and hides.  Part of this was reinvested in the community to help fund local infrastructure and healthcare. 

As far as SURVIVAL is concerned such initiatives to consult local people and to acknowledge the role of indigenous peoples in managing protected areas ‘looks good on paper’, but is hardly, they claim, an adequate substitute for land ownership rights and self determination. Nevertheless, it’s definitely a step in the right direction, and there are indications that in different parts of the world creative solutions are being found whereby wildlife is preserved without native people having to lose out.  

Brazil’s five sea turtle species were being so heavily exploited for their shells, eggs, oil and meat that conservationists feared that some might well become extinct.  Working with former turtle hunters, the Brazilian Federal Agency of the Environment launched a turtle rescue project. The hunters are now paid to protect nesting beaches.  They search the sand for eggs, dig them up, pack them and take them to one of the seventeen stations set up along the coast. Here the eggs are reburied in open-air hatcheries.  Once hatched, the baby turtles are returned to the wild. The local people, the conservationists and the turtles are happy.  

In Borneo Dutch Biologist Willie Smits's astonishing success with the re-forestation and the restoration of the ecosystem of a former rain forest in order to preserve the Orang-utan has involved the participation of local people has led to the creation of three thousand jobs.

If we are to inhabit a world of Pandas and People, the way forward is surely through encouraging open, flexible and culturally sensitive dialogue. Recently environmentalists and specialists in Chinese medicine have been sitting down together to discuss the problem and solutions are starting to emerge.  Domesticated animal bones have been suggested as a possible medicinal substitute for Tiger.

‘Life is a chain’, writes Daisaku Ikeda;  ‘All things are related. When any link is harmed, the other links are affected.’Environmentalists and indigenous people need each other’s wisdom to find creative solutions to the problem of vanishing wildlife. It is, after all, in everybody’s interest.