Sahil and Achili will share the unique story of the relationship between tigers and the Idu Mishmi people of the Dibang Valley of Arunachal Pradesh. Since 2011, Sahil and his Idu collaborators have been conducting research on a genetically distinct tiger population thriving in Idu people’s community forests. They have used a combination of cutting-edge scientific tools like camera traps and traditional anthropological approaches to understand how and why tigers have been conserved in Idu forests without any government/NGO protection. They have found more tigers in Dibang Valley than in regional tiger reserves. Despite livestock depredation and emotional threat, tiger killing is culturally prohibited as the Idu consider the tiger their ancestral sibling. This talk will reflect on how the recent push for tiger reserves and large infrastructure development is converting an ancestral relationship of coexistence into conflict and driving both, the tiger and the Idu culture, towards extinction. This story challenges the prevalent conservation model that separates people from wildlife and urges us to think beyond the simplistic binary of conflict and peaceful coexistence.
06:00 PM
February 19, 2024
