Traditional beliefs, culture, and local biodiversity protection: An ethnographic study in the Shaluli Mountains Region, Sichuan Province, China

Abstract

Located on the southeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the Shaluli Mountains Region (SMR) is an important conservation priority area in Southwest China’s highly biodiverse Hengduan Mountains. The SMR’s ecology is complex and topographically diverse, with unique composition of abundant flora and fauna. Historically and currently a majority-Tibetan region, Tibetan Buddhism has significantly affected most local people’s views on the natural environment. According to Tibetan religious theories and doctrines, the Shaluli Tibetans traditionally abstain from killing wild animals, believe in reincarnation (e.g., karmic cause and effect), the equality of all living beings, and the belief that everything has spirits. To understand how these beliefs and practices influenced the SMR’s ecology and biodiversity, and how modernization pressures affect them, we conducted a three-year ethnobiological field investigation in seven SMR counties and a neighboring city. The traditional worldview in this relatively remote region has profoundly shaped the lifestyles, customs, and behavioral norms of the local religiously-observant Tibetans. These beliefs have influenced their perspective on the natural world, having an overall positive role in the long-term protection of the local ecological environment and biodiversity. As the surrounding regions have experienced increasing development and modernization pressures that threaten this biodiversity hotspot, Shaluli’s Tibetan Buddhist temples and monks have assumed an active role promoting environmental protection, forest resource stewardship, and wildlife conservation. However, we found that modernization pressures and changing socio-economic conditions have negatively influenced these traditions, resulting in greater likelihood of biological invasions and pollution of the local soil and water sources.