INDIA, July 28, 2024 (BBC): In the eastern foothills of India’s Himalayas, livestock farmer Yang Ering Moyong slips on a baggy shirt and trousers and heads out in the early morning. As she stomps through the dense shrubbery in the hills surrounding the village of Mirem, she lets out a high-pitched call summoning her mithuns, a semi-wild and endangered cattle species, back from the woods. The 39-year-old mother of two, who is a member of the indigenous Adi tribe of Arunachal Pradesh, is the only female herder in her village. She started rearing mithuns when her husband died eight years ago. It is a tough business, she says. To prevent the mithuns from straying, Moyong and other members of the indigenous Adi community have constructed “living fences” from barbed-wire and stumps of orchid trees along the contour of the Himalayan foothills. The Adi community view the mithuns as sacred and believe that the existence of everything on Earth is tied to the birth of the semi-wild bovine species, says Abhishruti Sarma, a researcher at Ashoka University in India and author of the book Changing Affinities, which explores indigenous communities’ relationship with the mithuns.

“For the indigenous Adi community of Arunachal Pradesh, the existence of everything on the planet is tied to the birth of the mithun. When the mithun was born Dadi Bote, the God of animals became its custodian,” says Barun Taki, one of the mithun herders and the former president of the Mirem mithun farmers’ collective. Mithuns, which have been classed as “vulnerable” by the International Union For Conservation of Nature (IUCN), reside in forests and hilly terrains crisscrossed with streams, ponds, and lakes, below an altitude of 19,685ft with temperatures ranging between 68 F and 86 F. Moyong and other indigenous herders in north-east India rear mithuns in a free range ecosystem, allowing the cattle to roam free in the wild, without any supplementary feed except salt. Rising temperatures and human activities, such as forest logging and deforestation, have started threatening the mithuns’ habitat in recent years.To protect the mithun habitat and the species, scientists at the ICAR-NRC worked with the Adi community to build durable “living fences” in 2022.

Much more at source.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240725-the-indigenous-community-protecting-himalayan-sacred-cattle-in-india

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