The smell of wild boar simmered in soup filled the room that evening. Children played, tuak and arak filled our glasses, songs and stories flew around. The host proudly showed a video of the moment he caught the boar. His eyes shone brighter than the phone screen itself.
Villagers are always hanging out with each other in Ladak. Coming home from the field or the river, they often enjoy some afternoon drinks and meals in someone’s house, talking about anything to kill time. But this afternoon felt special, like a celebratory feast, reflecting something about how the landscape is changing.
Eating, selling, and saving wildlife
As we sat together, the talk turned to the rareness of boars and deer, and the declining luck of the village hunters. It was said that a boar of 60 kilograms is rather massive by today’s standards. The villagers encountered more of them in the past, when wild meat was a reliable source of protein. However, as the animals have become rarer, the meanings of hunting have multiplied. Now, the villager’s plates at home also mirror a shifting landscape.
The older men remembered a time when the forest felt “free,” a time when even the most protected species —such as pangolins, hornbills, Müller’s gibbon— were part of the diet rather than a celebratory catch. Later, with increasing market integration, hunting changed into something more economically-oriented as they discovered that hornbill beaks and pangolin scales could be sold for money. Then, in the 2010s, conservation NGOs came to Ladak and introduced new ideas about how they should perceive their forest, animals, and the broader environment. Now, they were asked to refrain from hunting endangered species and become active partners in their protection. Most villagers stopped shooting wildlife, although some continued to set up snares and traps for animals. Meanwhile, people from outside the village still brought their rifles to the forest.
Ambiguity in conservation practice
None of these changes were simple or complete. For example, I perceived ambiguity in the identities of the community patrol team members, who are mostly younger men. Two of them used to be prolific hunters. And they’re brothers. They know the forest better than others in their generation. To them, hunting never meant regular protein retrieval. They liked to collect trophies and enjoyed the satisfaction of a successful hunt.
Their identities changed when they started participating in forest patrol initiatives and were exposed to the ideas of conservation. This gives them the sense that they walk those same trails not just as hunters or villagers, but as part of a global constellation of conservation.
There is, however, an irony in their role in conservation. While global conservation increasingly celebrates the hard work of forest monitoring, they themselves often choose to keep their identities hidden. All of the team members are worried about their safety. They might get assaulted by outside hunters in the forest if they confront them during patrols. When they encounter hunters in the forest, therefore, they often pretend to be college students.
What the feast suggests
The wild boar feast offers a lesson for the study of community-led conservation. Conservation programmes have tried to steer Ladak towards new futures, in which former hunters become protectors of wildlife. However, the feast revealed that traditional practice, market integration, and conservation do not replace each other in a linear sequence. Wild animals have become rarer, but hunting has not become less important. Rather, hunting success is becoming more special, an occasion for storytelling and celebration.
Just like the practice of hunting, the practice of conservation also negotiates between multiple overlapping trajectories. The two brothers on the patrol team are not simply transitioning from hunters to conservationists. They hold multiple identities at once, which intersect and coexist, producing complex, hybrid, and sometimes problematic forms. To create an honest account of community-led conservation, therefore, we cannot just describe the futures that conservation programmes envision. We should pay attention to the ambiguities that arise as those visions meet the ground.