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RELATED THEMES agriculture environment water OTHER THEMES IN SW COLLECTION THEMES IN NE COLLECTION BACKGROUND |
forestry in the southwest collectionA number of narrators comment on the denuding of the slopes and express real concern about how the next generations will manage. One woman (China 9) says that more "wood and cogon grass" would bring people more benefit than anything else now. She explains why: "Because I see that the trees on the mountain are disappearing. Our generation almost does not have firewood. If we don't manage the forest well, what firewood would the next generation use? We would have no charcoal to burn either, nothing. And the cogon grass cannot grow now. Without cogon grass, what can ordinary people use to build houses?" She fears for the future and says that people no longer respect the seasons for collecting wood but take it at any time. Regulations, she says, are no longer enforced. Another Wa woman (China 10) in the same area, Lancang county, also says the uncontrolled cutting of trees, especially to increase land for cultivation, is the problem: "In the past, it was tough for people to farm the land, especially ploughing new land. Trees were thick and weeds were tall… Now the hoes are easy to use… And the land has been farmed for many generations… A lot of labour has been saved in farm work. They don't have to cut big trees and tall grasses. [But] don't you see that every mountain is barren? [Why?] It's because there are too many people. Forests are not managed well. More people need more firewood, but trees won't grow in one year… If they don't manage the forests well now, people won't have firewood anymore." But one woman in particular (China 12) talks at length and with great passion about the loss of trees, outlining more of the reasons for this, and the implications. She recalls planting seedlings as a child and that "those mountains were so beautiful", yet recently it's been "as though they had been cut by a sickle - not one tall tree left." She acknowledges that road-building - otherwise a benefit to the community - literally paved the way for outsiders to come in and fell huge swathes of forest, without check: "People from the forestry centre…didn't stop those who came and carried the logs away in truck after truck at midnight." At first the reaction was: "We people who live in the mountains don't cut trees like that; people from the plains cut them. We protect them, but people come to cut." But as the outsiders continued to plunder their resources, she explains, local people then felt if "You people on the plain can come and cut; we can cut too" - and so the trend worsened. She concludes: "People are rich, but the resources are used up." Putting time and money into planting more trees is the only answer, she and others feel - but as one narrator points out, such initiatives are only possible when poverty no longer drives people to act in the short term. quotes about forestry"Because our financial situation was not good, we had to cut down the trees and took them to Maguan to sell. We sold them to the factory. The Zhimu (a kind of wood) was all cut down to sell. In the past, we had no food to eat. If a person didn't cut down some wood to sell, what could he eat?… Now we have a better living standard; we ourselves plant trees." "There is much rain. When there is too much rain, the mudflow comes down from the woods on the mountain slope. That mud spreads on the fields… It was not serious when there were many trees on the slope, not as serious as it is now. We remember there were thick groves of trees. There isn't one grove now." "In our place, when we were young, trees were everywhere. They were so many that you couldn't get through them… I went [home] twice this year. I felt such sorrow when I saw the mountains. It was as though they had been cut by a sickle, not one tall tree left… when we were children, those mountains were so beautiful!… [Now] they have been turned into fields… The trees were planted by us when we were young, I remember we went with adults to plant the pine trees…" "People on the plain came to cut first…Our people were angry… People from the forestry centre were there to check, but they never stopped [them]. In the past, they only stopped us Miao teams, but they didn't stop those who came and carried the logs away in truck after truck at midnight… [Local people thought]: You people on the plain can come and cut; we can cut too." "In the past, we had regulated seasons to gather firewood. If it was not the permitted period, you couldn't collect any; otherwise the village head would scold you. Now people don't care anymore, they just go to collect it whenever they want to. Some people even cut the green wood, but no one is punished." "We should plant more trees… Plant them and manage them well. We should allocate a specific area for planting. If you allocate it, the villagers will plant. People manage their fields well… If every family can have a [wood] plot to manage, it can be managed." |
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