Indi Glow Taught His Bugun Tribe To Profit From Bird Conservation & Ecotourism

 
  • A line of tents is passed by Indi Glow. He enters a room while adjusting the binoculars’ neck strap and points to two framed pictures that are hanging on the wooden wall. Both depict an Indi who appears to be younger accepting accolades.
  • He continues with a soft smile, “I got the first one in 2009 and the second one in 2013.
  • The honors recognize an ecotourism business that Indi has operated at a location called Lama Camp for more than ten years. The camp is named after a location where the Dalai Lama’s entourage slept out for the night in 1959 while fleeing Tibet and is situated a few kilometers outside of Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary in the West Kameng district of the state of Arunachal Pradesh. The camp, which includes the eating area where Indi is standing now, provides a breathtaking view of the snow-capped Gori Chen peak close to the Arunachal-Tibet border on clear days. Additionally, it offers quick and simple access to hundreds of bird species, including some that are quite rare.
  • Profiting from its strategic location, Lama Camp has operated since 2006 as a basic ecotourism stop for birdwatchers as well as an occasional pit stop for neighborhood kids attending nearby nature camps. Overall, the camp is a component of Indi Glow’s environmentally and socially responsible business endeavor, which, in the words of his wife Nima Glow, “gives him a lot of satisfaction and calm.”
  • Indi is a beloved indigenous person from the Bugun tribe. The tribe, which has a population of only 1,500, controls a portion of the territory surrounding Eaglenest and uses customary boundaries rather than official ones to separate its territory from those of other tribes. Additionally, they ceded a sizable portion of their territory to the Indian Army, which landed in the vicinity of Eaglenest during the 1962 India-China war. Only now are the Buguns beginning the process of receiving compensation. Any territory that the Buguns claim now is divided among all of the people living there. And Indi began his ecotourism business on his property.
  • The company is currently profitable. “I have a nice income and am not dependent on other work. So I’m not too concerned,” he says. The enterprise is hailed as a success by the other Buguns as well because it is giving the locals jobs and bringing renown and tourists to the previously unknown Bugun territories.
  • But fifteen years ago, Indi and other Buguns reacted with skepticism when astronomer-turned-ecologist Ramana Athreya initially proposed the notion of a community-run bird tourism business at Eaglenest. People spent money to take in breathtaking vistas and diverse civilizations. Who would spend a lot of money to watch some birds?
  • Indi claims that she and her friends had never heard of “bird tourism” before Ramana mentioned it.
  • The fact that Athreya, who is currently an associate professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune, Maharashtra state, planned to spend a few years cataloging Eaglenest’s biodiversity made the situation much more perplexing. The latter, Athreya informed the Buguns, will bring in tourists and sustain the company going forward. In other words, the Buguns would need to support conservation if the bird tourism industry was to succeed.
  • But Athreya had to first show them that bird tourism might be successful before the tribe would be open to trying these ideas.
  • Athreya concurred despite having no prior experience planning bird tours. Indi made the decision to assist Athreya with the planning of the demo tour despite his reservations.
  • After all, Indi was well known for his intense interest in forests. He has over ten years of experience as a forest guard with the Arunachal Pradesh forest department. He afterwards gave it up and worked as a timber contractor till 1996, when the Supreme Court of India outlawed commercial timber felling. In actuality, Lama Camp’s surrounding forest, which today seems almost pure, historically saw extensive timber cutting. Following the ban, Indi continued to dabble in modest contract companies, such as building roads and construction, while maintaining contact with the forest department. As a result, in 2003, when Athreya first mentioned his ambitions for bird tourism to senior forest officers in Arunachal Pradesh, they advised him to contact Indi.
  • In the end, the pair established a long-lasting, prosperous partnership.
  • In order to organize the first-ever, 10-day birding tour in and around Eaglenest, Athreya gathered three birding enthusiasts—one each from Britain, Switzerland, and the United States—in April 2004. However, problems started on the first day of the excursion.
  • The tour party checked into a hotel in Tezpur, Assam, and had an early departure the following morning for Eaglenest. However, the Indian Army took control of the truck Indi had prepared to take them, which was not uncommon at the time. Indi promised Athreya he would “work things out” and after a short period of time, he was able to secure a second automobile. That one malfunctioned.
  • Indi and the driver drove through the night to get to Tezpur early in the morning after renting his third vehicle in Tenga, a city adjacent to the principal Bugun village of Singchung. As soon as everyone was seated, the tourists departed for Eaglenest. Nevertheless, as luck would have it, the automobile broke down while the gang was still en route.
  • Indi leased a four-wheel-drive car at Tenga, promising to get them out of their predicament. To everyone’s relief, the vehicle was able to transport the tour group to a little camp called Bompu, located well inside the sanctuary. But the relief didn’t last long. A few days before the group was scheduled to depart, the car’s transmission broke down. We had to trek back to Bompu in the dark because we were 10 kilometers (6 miles) away when this incident occurred, according to Athreya.
  • Thankfully, the travelers had a worthwhile birding experience despite spending some of their tour days on foot. The Ward’s trogon (Harpactes wardi), the Sikkim wedge-billed babbler (Stachyris humei), and the lovely nuthatch were among the more than 185 species they observed (Sitta formosa).
  • And Indi eventually succeeded in renting a functional car from Tenga, one that made it back to Tezpur without breaking down.
  • The pilot tour had been saved by Indi.
  • I believe I struck lucky when I initially met him, adds Athreya. “Now that I think about it, there are a dozen more people it couldn’t have worked with. Similar to the proverb “Marriages are created in heaven,” I arrived there at the perfect moment, and he was the right kind of guy at the right spot.
  • Athreya gave Indi about 20,000 rupees, or about $400, at the conclusion of the demo tour. That provided sufficient incentive to move through with the company plans.
  • Indi was aware that the pilot tour would not immediately result in increased tourists. As Athreya had previously informed him, the initial focus would be on gaining information of the forest’s species. And he gave it his best.
  • Indi and a few other members of the nearby Bugun and Monpa indigenous villages accompanied Athreya and other volunteer naturalists on their bird, amphibian, reptile, and butterfly surveys throughout the course of the following two years.
  • Then, in 2006, Indi and Athreya erected tents and restrooms at Lama Camp utilizing money from financing organizations including the Ford Foundation located in New York, U.S. While Indi took over camp management, they educated locals to act as cooks, caregivers, and bird guides (Athreya occasionally worked as a guide between astronomical research trips). Instead of spending money on advertising, they relied on email marketing and word-of-mouth recommendations to attract “true” birding lovers. They continue to use this tactic.
  • According to Indi, “we frequently attract serious photographers, nature enthusiasts, or birdwatchers here.” We discourage campfires, picnics, and boisterous celebrations, and we don’t accept reservations from such groups since they disrupt other visitors.
  • The Bugun liocichla (Liocichla bugunorum), a severely endangered bird with less than 20 known individuals, was first identified by Athreya in 2006. The majority of these individuals reside around the Lama Camp grounds. Both the bird and the Buguns were unfamiliar to science. The same year, Indi and Athreya formally unveiled their venture in bird tourism. The Bugun liocichla aroused a lot of enthusiasm and turned out to be a very popular attraction for both domestic and foreign tourists. It was the first new bird species described from India in more than 50 years.
  • In their first year, the pair made money: they put in about 1 million rupees (about $20,000 at the time) and made over 1.7 million rupees. The following year, 250 visitors arrived. Additionally, by 2008, the company was bringing in about 5 million rupees annually, or about $100,000. (By way of reference, the typical yearly wage for a contract worker in the Eaglenest region would then be roughly $1,000.)
  • Athreya resigned in 2010 to allow Indi to take over the full management of the company. Indi stopped working on any contracts he had been doing on the side in order to give his full attention to the position. He added more tents and improved the camp over time, giving visitors a more pleasant, if not lavish, stay. On a tiny piece of property he possessed in 2008, he constructed a second, considerably more luxurious campsite a few kilometers distant, close to the settlement of Ramalingam.
  • In Eaglenest, Athreya is currently focusing on his research endeavors (while also carrying out astrophysics research in Pune). He teaches indigenous young people, both men and women, to work as research workers and ecotourism guides with the aid of grants from the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation’s (ONGC) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program and the Nadathur Trust located in Bengaluru (previously Bangalore).
  • In addition, he keeps assisting locals from the nearby villages who want to become bird guides.
  • Being a bird guide is a thing there now, claims Athreya. “We currently have about 10 guides, and it’s great that some of them go throughout northeast India on their own time. Sometimes people ask me for a bird book and a pair of binoculars because they wish to work as guides. And we provide them with those. Sometimes visitors will spend a year working in the kitchen while honing their guiding abilities for birds.
  • All of the in-house and independent bird guides at Eaglenest are from the nearby communities, and they can make up to 4,000 rupees ($56) per day working, which is more than ten times the national average daily pay.
  • Athreya is pleased that the bird tourism industry has altered public perceptions about forests. According to Athreya, they now realize that they can utilize and profit from the forest without cutting it. We liberated their innate sense of entrepreneurship, in a way.
  • The company will soon start its thirteenth year. Indi manages it privately, but it has an impact on the community by creating jobs for locals and generating cash for establishments like convenience stores and car rental agencies. Since they must travel through the Bugun lands in order to get to Eaglenest, birding tourists also pay a community fee, which goes into Singchung’s general fund for the village council to spend as it sees fit.
  • Additionally, Indi contributes his time and money to the Bugun Welfare Society, an NGO he helped found in 2000, to help run nature camps for kids and teacher training courses.
  • The ecotourism endeavor has been particularly successful for Indi, who has spent a significant portion of his life as a businessman. Indi explains that having integrity and being honest are all you need to succeed in this industry. “My crew is the same, and they too receive generous tips. I enjoy this line of work.
  • In fact, outside private parties have made attempts to invest in the company and take over running it. Indi, though, has insisted that he and the Buguns should continue to be in charge.
  • Indi has developed as a Bugun leader in environmental protection. In order to persuade the Buguns that securing a portion of their land as a community reserve would be beneficial, he teamed up with Umesh Srinivasan, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University who has been studying Eaglenest’s birds for more than ten years, and the local forest officer in 2013. Singchung’s watershed was located in this area of the forest; if it dried up, the villages may suffer greatly. The threat of landslides was continual since the forest was being continuously chopped down for farmland. The woodland was home to endangered species like the Bhutan splendour butterfly and the Bugun liocichla (Bhutanitis lidderdalii). Furthermore, acquiring a portion of their property would permanently establish the Buguns’ control over that portion, which is currently just de facto theirs.
  • Indi’s efforts were successful. 17 square kilometers (6.6 square miles) of Bugun land were designated as the Singchung Bugun Village Community Reserve by the Arunachal Pradesh government in 2017.
  • Sange Norbu Phiang, a teacher from Singchung and secretary of the reserve’s management committee, calls Indi Babu “a pioneer.” We are now safeguarding our forests as a result of him leading this fight,
  • The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) naturalist Rohan Pandit, who has worked in Eaglenest with Indi for a number of years, gives him credit for putting conservation on the Buguns’ radar.
  • Only Indi Babu expressed some interest when Ramana Athreya first arrived, and he has supported him all along, according to Pandit. “Now, his tourism business is helping a lot of people. Many Buguns supported the communal reserve as well since seeing Indi involved gave them more confidence.
  • Indi’s company is still profitable now, but its expansion has paused. But he doesn’t seem troubled by this. We don’t now accept a lot of tourists. Each year, we have 80 to 90 visitors from India and 120 to 130 visitors from other countries, according to Indi. “A rush is not good right now and we can’t handle it.”
  • However, Athreya believes that there is much room for the company to expand. Since 2010, “the tourism industry hasn’t altered much,” he claims. “I believe it performed worse than I had hoped and better than I had a right to expect. I had hoped it would rise significantly more.
  • Athreya continues, “because of all the stakeholders’ contributions, and their appreciation and accommodation of others’ roles – the Buguns, the Arunachal Pradesh forest department, NGOs, and researchers — conservation in Eaglenest has, overall, been a success story.”
  • Now, building on Indi’s birding endeavor, Athreya aims to expand tourism beyond birdwatching to other areas of the Buguns’ community lands and communities. He estimates that this will bring in at least five times as much money as it currently does, with the profits—roughly 20%—being split between the Buguns and conservation efforts in the communal reserve.
  • Apart from the money and prospects, the Bugun liocichla and the bird tourist business inspire a sense of pride in the Bugun people.
  • Today, the name of our Bugun community is known all over the world, and we are really pleased by this, adds Phiang. “As a result, a few of us are also attempting to contribute in some small way to preserve the trees and our river.”
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