Northern Areas Conservation Program

The Northern Areas Conservation Program
The Northern Areas Conservation Program (NACP) is a multi-year program in southern Gilgit and Diamer Districts of Northern Pakistan designed to help protect one of the last extensive arid conifer forests in the Western Himalayas – an area that has been deemed a Global 200 Ecoregion, an Endemic Bird Area of Urgent Biological Importance, and a Center for Floral Endemism. There is enormous biological and geographic diversity found in this “place where continents collided.” Geologically this is the Kohistan Plate or Island Arc Complex, essentially an island caught and uplifted between India and Asia’s landmass and today the confluence of three of the greatest mountain ranges in the world: the Himalayas, the Karakorams, and the Hindu Kush. This biodiversity and geography is matched by (and helped create) an equivalent ethnic and linguistic diversity.

The Human Aspect
A vast majority of the people of Diamer and southern Gilgit districts survive directly on environmental benefits from local ecosystem processes. Altitudinal migrants and agro-pastoralists take livestock into high pastures in the spring and move back to lower elevation villages before winter. They grow various crops on tiny farm plots hewn from sides of mountains and terraced with rock walls. These are irrigated by often centuries-old water channels cut across the face of cliffs and sometimes stretching back tens of kilometers to rivers descending from distant glaciers. Helping local communities initiate and maintain reforms for environmental sustainability and stability will help them maintain their unique environment and cultural identity.

Threats 
 Increased logging (facilitated by outside forces and improved access from the Karakoram Highway) and overhunting (through access to modern weaponry) has already decimated some valleys. For example, during a visit to the Sai Valley in July 1994, ca. 1,000 mature conifers were seen cut and piled in one location, and between 1994 and 1997 almost all blue pines (Pinus wallichiana) were removed from the 50 km long valley. If this rate of deforestation were to continue, it was estimated that most of the remaining forested valleys could be completely stripped of trees within 5-10 years.
 
 
WCS Activities
The NACP has five phases: introduction, education, inventory, creation of Community Conservation Committees, and implementation of Community Wildlife Guards. The first phase, introduction, began in 1997, and involved repeated visits to the valleys and discussions (both formal and informal) with local communities and jurga members (community leaders). Discussion topics ranged from receiving permission to continue work in the valleys, to obtaining local perspectives on environmental problems, to introducing the plans and goals of the program, including informal dialogues on conservation education. The second phase, formal conservation education, began in 1998. Community-wide conservation education meetings (with a generator-powered slide show presentation) were held in each valley under consideration, reaching over 2,000 villagers. Teacher training workshops (involving specially developed conservation curriculum materials and activities) were held for 78 teachers from 13 valleys. Agreements were made to create resource committees and to slow or stop logging and hunting in many valleys. Resource committees have now been formed in most valleys under consideration, and pilot projects have volunteer Community Wildlife Guards operating in three valleys.

Important Next Steps
· We will continue to arrange training and workshops for the volunteer wildlife guards and resource conservation committees to ensure protection and sustainable use of forests and forest products.
· We will continue to arrange and facilitate meetings with the remaining valleys between the resource committees and the Government Wildlife and Forest Department to officially gain permission for and implement the volunteer community wildlife guard project.
· The Community Conservation Education Project will continue in selected valleys to help communities sustainably manage their resources.
· We will continue to look for ways to expand our volunteer wildlife guards to other valleys in the region, and to find funding to ensure sustainability of this unique community driven conservation initiative.