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

3.4 Eco-tourism Products
The mountain region of Karakoram Hindukush Himalaya offers unique natural
l<strong>and</strong>scape with rich biodiversity, five peaks higher than 8,000 m, including
K2. There are four designated national parks with an overall surface of 1.6 million
hectares (more than 9 % of the overall area of the region (Hussain 2009).
The rangel<strong>and</strong>s <strong>and</strong> pastures offer beautiful meadows, plateaus <strong>and</strong> valleys with
enormous potential for nature tourism <strong>and</strong> travel that generate revenue for the
government <strong>and</strong> contribute to household income of local people. Community
based trophy-hunting programme initiated by the government with support
from conservation <strong>and</strong> development agencies is one of the key products which
serves both the conservation <strong>and</strong> development goals in mountain regions.
Some of the impacts of the trophy-hunting programme include ownership of
wild resource by communities, improved livelihood options <strong>and</strong> availability of
additional economic opportunities, reduced livestock, imposed ban on illegal
cutting of forests <strong>and</strong> controlled grazing practices, elimination of poaching,
significant increase in population of markhor, ibex, blue sheep <strong>and</strong> associated
species positive attitude of communities towards predators <strong>and</strong> improvement
provision of health <strong>and</strong> education services in the area due to investments in
social sector (www.wdgb.gov.pk)
4 Conclusions
Currently sheep <strong>and</strong> goat produced in Gilgit-Baltistan <strong>and</strong> Chitral find their
ways to the livestock markets through different intermediaries, who extracts
surpluses due to limited facilities provided by the state for livestock marketing.
The milk products are used for homestead consumption <strong>and</strong> important for
food security particularly in remote mountain valleys areas. Wool <strong>and</strong> woollen
h<strong>and</strong>icrafts are main livestock products that can be extensively traded. The
non-pastoral products like medicinal <strong>and</strong> aromatic plants, wild fruits <strong>and</strong>
gemstones are important in diversifying the income for the pastoral household.
The meat <strong>and</strong> live animal markets are poorly regulated <strong>and</strong> biased to favour the
consumer at the cost of the producer. Such bias is materialized, first through
regulated meat prices for its cheap availability to the urban consumers. Second,
there are no formal regulations in the meat market for qualitative pricing of
meat for example on the basis of part of carcass sold or age of the animal. This
is in turn translated in live animal marketing, where livestock is sold on per
head bargain basis, rather than on quality <strong>and</strong> weight basis. This allows for
the exploitation of the producer <strong>and</strong> compels him to look at the number of
animals rather than the quality of animals. The increasing number of livestock
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