Pastoralism and Rangeland Management on the Tibetan Plateau in ...

level for making different homestead use products, however, with the changes
in the living style, now most of the skins find their ways to the tanneries in the
central <strong>and</strong> southern Punjab. Major non-livestock pastoral products including
non-timber forest products (NTFPs), mining <strong>and</strong> gems cutting <strong>and</strong> polishing
<strong>and</strong> eco-tourism products. Salajeet (base for a tonic), Chilghoza (seeds of Pinus
gerardina) <strong>and</strong> Zera (cumin seeds, a spice) are most common NTFPs sold in
the market, while precious <strong>and</strong> semi-precious gemstones are also sold as unprocessed
<strong>and</strong> in cut forms. However, the production <strong>and</strong> marketing systems
for NTFPs are not effectively organized, mainly constrained by issues of legal
rights, management <strong>and</strong> poor investments in production <strong>and</strong> marketing infrastructure
<strong>and</strong> human resources. Eco-tourism products include maintaining
rangel<strong>and</strong>s as l<strong>and</strong>scapes for attracting tourism <strong>and</strong> protection of wild animals
<strong>and</strong> introduction of trophy-hunting which brings income to local communities
that are invested in social development <strong>and</strong> conservation of wildlife resources.
1 Introduction
The mountainous regions of Northern Pakistan (Figure 1) are mainly arid
with sparse natural forest on the hill slopes limited mainly to the southern
fringes under monsoon influence. On alluvial fans at valley bottoms mainly
subsistence-oriented combined mountain agriculture prevails, in which the
high altitude areas are used as summer pastures. The cropped lowl<strong>and</strong>s are
privately owned by individual families, while the high altitude pastures are
common property of the villages with differentially established rights for
different communities occupying the corresponding village. The seasonality,
market influence <strong>and</strong> terrain all have influence on the pastoral patterns in
the mountain regions of Northern Pakistan (Photo 1). In areas with access to
advanced communication systems the livestock is now sent through a jointly
hired herder, while in remote valleys part of the members of each stakeholder
family still visit such pastures with their own herds of livestock. The hardly
accessible pastures are rented out on an annual basis to the l<strong>and</strong>less pastoralists
coming from down country. With different pastoral strategies the stakeholders
for production <strong>and</strong> marketing patterns also vary slightly.
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