Who is best able to manage natural resources to insure sustainable use? Scholars have discovered that Taiwan's aboriginal people, though taking from nature for centuries, have not exhausted its resources. And though they hunted, animals did not become "endangered species." In the Wutai Mountain district in Pingtung, the Rukai indigenous people have been trying to recover hunting methods passed down by their ancestors, because hunting may actually be helpful to environmental protection and sustainable use of resources there.

It is an autumn weekend evening, in Haucha Village in Wutai Rural Township, 400 meters above sea level. Students and faculty from National Pingtung Polytechnic Institute (PPI), carrying an overhead projector and cloth screen, gather in the courtyard of elder Kuo Chin-ting. There they display pictures of wild animals native to Taiwan-the Formosan Reeve's muntjac, the mountain boar, and the Formosan serow. As they watch the familiar images, the 10 or so hunters in attendance break the evening silence with their rowdy commentary. "That one really stinks!" "You rarely see one of those around here." They play one-upmanship as they tell about their experiences.

Meanwhile, PPI students and faculty, holding infrared sensors, explain to the hunters how to place these in mountain hunting areas. When an animal passes, the camera will automatically take a photo, and the film needs to be changed every two weeks. With long-term observation, wildlife data can be collected for each area. These results can then be matched with satellite photos, and analysis of local vegetation and the animals' eating habits, to estimate changes in the animal populations. These estimates will govern hunting quotas, so that "the animals will not be carelessly hunted out of existence."

"Will the camera frighten away the animals?" "Mountain boars often change their routes, and it would be hard to get pictures of the same animal more than once." "If I put a camera up some place, does that mean that hunting area belongs to me?" When a sixty-year-old hunter asks this last question, the audience-who have to have it translated from the aboriginal-roar with laughter. Tu Lien-tsai has some doubts: "I am very familiar with the mountains. I don't think I would base my hunting habits on these devices."

The scholars' earnest explanations often meet with laughter and skepticism. PPI professor Pei Chia-chi, who has been to several such meetings, says that the Rukai hunters know these mountains like the back of their hands and don't need machines. However, he adds, "outsiders only believe quantifiable data." To capture the attention of some in the audience who sit talking to each other with bowed heads, Pei raises his voice: "The more data we collect, the better it will be for everyone. We must try hard to let everyone know that we know what we are doing, because, outside of here, many people do not believe that hunting will not cause the number of animals to decline."

In the yard of a traditional Rukai stone house, biologists sit with local hunters and exchange ideas. This is the first step in wildlife management for Wutai Rural Township.

Home of the clouded leopard

"Wutou Mountain, Tamumu Mountain, and Tawu Mountain; tall and strong like three pillars of a tripod. Let us never forget our ancient spirit of unity." This Rukai song succinctly sketches out the traditional hunting grounds of the Rukai.

The Rukai are divided into three main groups. Of these, one is the West Rukai, distributed around Wutai Rural Township. These are a splinter group from the East Rukai. Legend has it that the West Rukai, faced with invasion, crossed the Central Mountain Range to settle in today's Old Haucha Village, and in their journey were accompanied by clouded leopards. From Wutai they spread to other nearby villages. Auvini, a Rukai, says that Haucha Rukai have never killed clouded leopards, nor worn their skins, because these were the tribe's hunting animals, and one of the forms in which deities appeared.

"Our ancestors built a village amidst steep mountains. They really had a good eye to choose this spot. Nearby were abundant minerals on Sheng Mountain, and aiyuzi (Ficus pumila var. awkeotsang) in the fields. Every peak and river had its own name. Hunting areas were distributed using ridges and gorges as boundaries. Our ancestors tended their hunting areas as carefully as Han Chinese looked after their fields." These remarks were made by Luo Ta-cheng, a skilled hunter and also a township assemblyman, at a conference on aboriginal life and natural resource management. They reveal his feelings about his land.

Hunting was traditionally an important source of food for the Rukai, as for other mountain-dwelling aboriginal peoples like the Bunun and Atayal. For the Rukai, living at the foot of the mountains, land belonged to the tribal chief, who was responsible for looking after the old and weak. But hunting land rights were determined by general agreement. Hunters did not necessarily leave their hunting grounds to their own children, and any child with an instinct for hunting could go into the mountains to learn from an elder huntsman. Any hunter who returned with six head of mountain boar was awarded a lily as a badge of honor; the game would be shared with family and friends, with the thighs and intestines going to the chief.

Sasala (whose Chinese name is Chao Kuei-chung), now 30 and a member of the Council of Aboriginal Affairs, who grew up in Old Haucha, tells how it used to be. There was a steep slope outside the village, and when hunters came back with some large piece of game, they would shout the news as soon as they reached the ridge line. Villagers would happily pass the word along and come out to greet the returnee. Children would follow along as the hunter entered the village, where they would line up for a share of the catch, one share for each, large and small alike. "This tradition was still observed when I was a child." However, because access to Old Haucha was very difficult, in 1974 the villagers moved to New Haucha. With no similar topography in the new site, the tradition, which had helped cement the group, steadily died out.

Luo Ta-cheng says that public knowledge of hunt results had the effect of encouraging the taking of only larger, more mature animals. He adds that hunting was an important activity for aboriginal people. Hunters were specialists (they didn't even have to cut up the prey, that was for someone else to do) and many elements of life were organized around hunting. For example, Rukai stone houses are high in back, but low in front, with low and narrow entranceways; this was to make it easier for the young and weak to defend their homes while the stronger men were away hunting. In the tribe, hunters were held in high esteem.

Enemy of conservation?

Many traditions today exist only in memory. In the Japanese occupation era, mountain villagers were forced to relocate to the foothills, away from traditional hunting grounds. The modern economy has further undermined village life, with most people leaving to work in the cities and even aboriginal languages being lost. There are but few aboriginals left living in their tribal villages and living by hunting alone; at best, hunting is a sideline.

Like other aboriginal peoples, the Rukai of Wutai are leaving behind traditional life. But, comparatively speaking, Wutai remains less disrupted. Being in remote southern Taiwan, and as yet without intrusion by major roads, there are few outsiders, and the simple village life is relatively intact. Animal resources have remained more stable, so hunting has been carried on longer. Kuo Chin-ting, who is now 53 and rarely hunts these days, says that he earned the tuition money for his four children completely through hunting.

Lately hunters have come to be regarded as enemies of the environment. As mountain goods shops in the lowlands have increased demand for wild animal products, hunting has been transformed. It is no longer mainly for sharing among villagers, but for commerce. Hunters now come riding down the mountains on motorcycles, their game strapped on, looking for lowland buyers.

Consequently, hunting of wildlife has become suspect among outsiders. Concern about environmental protection in the lowlands has come to affect life in the mountains, and there has also been pressure from abroad and a series of regulatory interventions (including the National Park Law, the Wildlife Conservation Law, and the establishment of nature preserves). Old hunting grounds have been claimed by the state, with every tree and blade of grass strictly protected. With heavy punishments imposed from above, and the attraction of external economic opportunities, the social status of hunters has dropped precipitously, from an honored class to a virtually criminal class.

Yet, it is just at this time that a plan has been suggested which would seem to fly in the face of these trends. It is being discussed and implemented in Wutai, and traditional hunting consciousness may be on the way back.

Who is destroying the mountains?

With the rise of conservationism, scholars have been heading into the mountains to conduct surveys. They have found that, though the government has established nature preserves, hunting has simply gone underground, making it even more difficult to manage. It is not only that the hunting tradition of the aboriginal peoples cannot be eradicated overnight; poachers from the lowlands have also been active. Conservationists often call for more manpower to enforce the laws in the broad expanses of mountain land, but the government has only limited funding. For example, in Shei-Pa National Park, which covers 70,000 hectares, there are less than 20 rangers. This situation frustrates scholars.

Over the last decade or so, from being a graduate student to chairman of wildlife conservation studies at PPI, Pei Chia-chi has done studies of the Formosan Reeve's muntjac, forest resources, and mountain goods shops. Because of geographic proximity, PPI students and faculty work in the Wutai, Wutou Mountain, and Tawu Mountain areas. They have discovered that the level of hunting has not decreased over the past 20 years.

Taking the long-term view, Pei notes that there have been only two known cases of animals in Taiwan being hunted to extinction: The Formosan sika was wiped out by the Dutch during their brief occupation, and the Green Island flying fox was devastated by a small number of Han Chinese in only a few years. In fact, overdevelopment of habitat areas is the major threat to Taiwan wildlife. "The pressure on Taiwan's animal populations has never come from aboriginal hunting," says Pei, who concludes that aboriginal people are not playing a major role in the extinction of wildlife.

What he has seen has led him to conclude that existing laws only serve to force aboriginal people out of the mountains, leaving villages deserted, which only makes it that much easier for outsiders to come in. The rate of destruction ends up being faster, and forest fires and poaching incidents are common. Moreover, as the mountains are exploited, this hastens the outflow of aboriginal people, who then head to the cities, and urbanization itself becomes an even bigger problem for the environment, he says. Since hunters have this great asset of understanding nature, and the full government ban on hunting has not effectively changed things, why not turn their capabilities to the service of conservation?

Return to the homeland

At the same time, there are those in Wutai approaching things from the aboriginal point of view, seeking a new lease on life for their communities. Sasala left Old Haucha when he was a child, and studied and worked in lowlands society. In 1989 he founded Aboriginal Past magazine, after which came the "Return Our Land" movement, and protests against the Machia Reservoir. He became a leading figure in the aboriginal movement. Yet, despite the myriad activities, many activists felt that they lacked any firm foundation, so people very quietly began to "return to the village to seek survival." Six years ago, Sasala returned to Pingtung.

"I can't deny that many indigenous communities in Taiwan have virtually disappeared," he says. Villages of 400-500 people now have maybe 40 or 50 left, and there is nothing left of the former cultural significance of hunting. But aboriginals who have chosen life in the cities have basically engaged in cultural suicide.

Many aborigines end up living in the worst parts of cities. The parents go out to work, while the kids leave their elders, drop out of school and can't find decent care or education. They all end up living on the margins of the city, just because there is even less of a future by remaining in the village. Says Sasala: "The habitat of indigenous culture is the village, that's where the heritage is. If there were some economic incentive for people to come back to the place of their birth, perhaps the next generation could, through community activities, learn to know their own identity."

Effective management of the animal resources in the mountains, so hunting could be gradually restored, and resources used effectively, could contribute to Sasala's goal. Not only would it help some people earn money, the village would no longer be simply a place where indigenous people nurse their wounds and drink away their sorrows.

Thus, one type of idealist who favors reviving hunting seeks sustainable use of resources, another wants to revive village life. Meanwhile, many hunters go out to jobs during the week and come back to the village on the weekend. Lately they have been talking with students and faculty from PPI about hunting and animal life.

We have used it for centuries!

A discussion is going on in Ali Village about the old hunting grounds and their maintenance. Two elders begin quietly arguing. Sasala explains that each was criticizing the other for not taking good care of the hunting grounds left to them by their ancestors, instead letting outsiders come in to destroy the area.

PPI researcher first spent two years understanding the traditional Wutai hunting system. They found much of the old system still in place. Even more importantly, they discovered that these customs could contribute to the goal of sustainable use. In the past, hunting was a major source of food, so the hunting grounds were like a warehouse and thus very important. Anthropologists have found that one of the main causes of aboriginal head-hunting attacks on Han Chinese in the past was defense of hunting grounds.

Of course, with new policies and systems imposed from without, and the transformation of aboriginal life, in many areas people no longer place much importance on management of hunting grounds. Pei says that a student of his doing research into the hunting culture of the Taroko tribe in Hualien discovered that, during the Japanese occupation, local communities were forced to relocate and intermingle, and many outsiders came in. Thus it became virtually impossible to maintain the separation of hunting grounds. But there has been less outside interference in Wutai, and even today, when one hunter encroaches on the hunting grounds of another, argument ensues.

Students and faculty at PPI have prepared a map delineating hunting areas around Wutai. Of the 2000 or so people in the Rural Township, there are still about 40 active hunters. The land has been divided into 21 zones, with one or perhaps two hunters to each area; each area encompasses several mountain peaks. Most hunters do farm work or work in the cities, but during the off-season for agriculture, which lasts from October to March, many go into the mountains to hunt, or to pick aiyuzi or other plants.

Li Teng-yung, a research assistant at PPI who has trekked into the mountains with hunters, notes the many useful functions hunters fulfill: For example, they trim old aiyu trees so that the next year the trees will again have aiyuzi. They keep the trails clear, and keep an eye out for whether anyone has infringed their area. Some hunters avoid hunting around lakes. All these are compatible with managing natural resources.

After the PPI mapped out hunting grounds, it was discovered that these covered less than one-fifth of Wutai Rural Township. Also, because of forbidding topography or traditional taboos, some untouched areas were left between the hunting grounds. This fits right in with theories of effective management of natural resources. Professor Pei explains that there is a theory in natural resources management in which hunters should only hunt in a defined area, with surrounding areas off limits. When the animal populations in protected areas get excessive, animals naturally migrate into the hunting grounds, thus insuring that there will always be a supply of animals for hunting, with no danger of extermination.

In the Wutou and Tawu mountain areas, the most important in Wutai, there is abundant vegetation and water, making them perfect habitat areas for animals. Haucha elder Kuo Chin-ting says that in the past, people usually avoided swamps, which were overgrown with plants and easy to get lost in. Over time, by oral tradition (the equivalent of tribal law), these became taboo areas. The Rukai and Paiwan peoples always considered as sacred, forbidden ground the area around Big Ghost and Small Ghost lakes-site of the legend of "love between a man and a snake." This made it a great wildlife refuge. Taking note of these old customs, Pei says: "We came here armed with our ecological theories, only to discover that the indigenous people have been verifying their correctness for more than 1000 years."

Traditional and modern management

"There are many mechanisms in Rukai tradition which can achieve the goal of effective wildlife management," writes Luo Fang-ming, who did his MA thesis on Rukai hunting. One such mechanism was bird divination, practiced by all of the indigenous peoples on Taiwan proper. When Rukai hunters left home, if they came across a masiang bird, the bird's flight pattern would indicate whether to continue hunting for that day, and where. Luo explains that, while the actual impact of bird divination on hunting behavior requires further study, "from our point of view, since we see birds as flying randomly, this scattered hunting activities around, giving animals breathing space."

Though the Rukai had no scientific approaches, hunters relied on their instincts and knowledge to manage their hunting grounds. For example, whereas their hunting grounds look like a swathe of mountain greenery to folks from the lowlands, hunters like Ila Village's Luo Li-wen can tell you exactly where the natural boundaries are: "Everything north of Ailiao River is ours, and everything on the other side belongs to Wutai and Haucha."

"I don't think you necessarily have to have scientific techniques to confirm that the animal populations in the mountain areas are maintaining stability," says Pei, whose PhD is in wildlife studies. But, the mechanisms that served to restrain aboriginal hunting over the years have mostly withered away, so it is necessary to bring in monitoring techniques to confirm that hunting will not devastate animal populations.

After the entry of Christianity into the aboriginal villages, many taboos that may have served to limit hunting disappeared. Kuo Chin-ting, who began hunting back in 1953, says that his animal take was much higher than for his father and grandfather. This is because he was no longer affected by the restraints imposed by bird divination.

Another concern is the use today of metal traps. They are easier to use and more lethal. With aboriginal peoples no longer observing traditional norms, many amateur hunters have been ruthlessly hunting animals toward extinction. Thus, some people think that permitting legal hunting by aboriginals will only hurry the demise of animals.

Searching for the clouded leopard

For Pei, numbers are necessary to convince society at large. For Sasala unless the community survives, everything else is meaningless, so it is necessary to rapidly build a consensus within the village. And thus the activity entitled "In Search of the Clouded Leopard" was initiated.

It had been a long time since anyone followed the old trails that Rukai ancestors took when they moved to what is now Wutai Rural Township, 600 years ago. With each step on the long mountain road they were walking in the footsteps of their ancestors. How exciting it was to come across battlefields, old villages, or sites of cultural artifacts. Even half a year later, at a seminar explaining the automatic cameras, someone kept asking: "When are we going again?"

Researchers from the Academia Sinica who went along found that the hikers did not preserve traditional rituals or taboos. For instance, when they passed through Palu and Anshan valleys, which legend says are the resting places of the Rukai ancestors, the hikers, led by a church elder, prayed in a Christian fashion. Originally it was thought that elders would know the origins and meaning of many place names, as well as the locations of those places, but they did not in fact know the answers to such questions. Thus, concludes Sasala, who went on the trek, the most urgent task right now is to rediscover all the old trails, and reconstruct tribal culture and history.

"I hope in the future we can trek once per year, passing through traditional lands and places of historical importance, to understand how the West Rukai spread. We will also survey the natural resources." Sasala says that elders told him many things he did not know-about things that happened long ago, and that place names were often derived from commonly used plants. Creating a foundation of shared knowledge among the generations marks the beginning of transmission of the tribal culture.

Also a social movement

As for legalizing hunting for the tribe, Wutai Primary School principal Tu Chuan notes that today one can no longer capture a boar and come home bathed in glory; old hunters are fading away, and it is much easier for young people to make money in the cities. Thus, if you want to attract young people to join in the work of protecting the mountains, it is necessary to create a plan in which the mountains become everyone's property, with the land not belonging to any individual. It is necessary to have structure and expert management. Thus hunting should not be the only economic use. "There will only really be development when it is everyone's common interest."

"Hunting is not just about catching animals." The PPI plan aims to extend further from just hunting. As a first step, in 1996 the "Rukai Nature Foundation" was established, and it is hoped all those in the village will join. Hunters and guides will pay fees, and be licensed, and the RNF will monitor hunting and handle all sales of game, thus minimizing the risk of transgressing the law. Currently aboriginals are banned from taking mountain products like aiyuzi, or else such products are monopolized by Han Chinese from the lowlands; the RNF will try to help aboriginal people secure their rights to these products.

Also, indigenous people need not hunt themselves, but could sell their hunting rights to tourists, earning money that way. Currently many people go up to the Big Ghost and Small Ghost area to hike. In the future indigenous people could serve as guides. Thus the PPI plan calls not only for hunters, but also guides and administrators, creating further job opportunities.

Professor Pei lists various ideas: Nature spreads seeds on its own, and then some seedlings don't survive; perhaps excess seedlings could be transplanted and sold to flower markets in the lowlands. When a sound management system is in place for the natural resources, the "river bank" system (in which people upstream manage water quality and people downstream pay a fee for this) could be adopted. Or, funds earned from hunting and tourism could be used to improve medical care and social welfare in the villages.

Pei Chia-chi notes that, though there is today more attention being paid to the rights of disadvantaged groups, and there is a trend toward returning land to indigenous people, "the result of returning land to aboriginal people today will be that it ends up in Han Chinese hands all that much quicker, so there will be still more development, with soil erosion and water pollution." Over the last few years, more than 600,000 hectares of land have been "liberated" from the state, but the use of most of this has been transferred to non-aborigines. The government frees up the land one small plot at a time, and each one is taken and "developed" in turn. "If aboriginal people are not encouraged to manage the land themselves, in the future, the more land that is returned, the more will be lost," says Professor Pei.

No forest, no hunters

This February of 1997, the RNF held a seminar in Wutai entitled "Reconstructing the Mountain Forest Guardian Spirit." The goal was to encourage aboriginal people to once again play the role of guardians of the forest.

In fact, one of the biggest problems in implementing environmental protection plans in Taiwan has been the lack of cooperation at the local level. If local culture is not taken into account, any plan is likely to end up being unsuccessful. Many current examples demonstrate that illegal activity can be reduced if local people are allowed to directly participate in nature management and monitoring.

Even in remote Wutai, public works, road-building, and illegal slopeland cultivation are increasingly eroding the land available for the Rukai and for wildlife. Take for example Small Ghost Lake, formerly a sacred area. For more than a decade now, it has been subject to destruction from mining, including use of explosives and construction of access roads. There has even been an influx of visitors on the weekends. All the Rukai can do is stand by and watch their land being transformed. It is more urgent than ever to get the Rukai involved in managing their own land.

In order to make the exceptions in the law that would be necessary to legalize hunting, the Pingtung County government could empower tribal communities to begin on an experimental basis. Under current laws, if the goal is to achieve sustainable use of natural resources, local governments can commission private groups to manage resources.

A growing number of wildlife surveys done by scholars in recent years have discovered that, despite a general deterioration of the environment, many flora and fauna are not so rare as had been supposed. Sun Yuan-hsun, who did his doctoral dissertation on owls, says that, if there is strict monitoring, there is no reason not to allow hunting, as the aborigines want. Of course, it is also understandable if some scholars harbor fond feelings for the creatures they study, and therefore oppose hunting. "Everybody needs to be less subjective, so that everyone can cooperate to insure that resources can be maintained indefinitely."

But what about the law? An official at the Council of Agriculture, the governing body for wildlife protection, notes that "the Wildlife Conservation Law was targeted at the needs of a specific moment. All law is open to change, and in the future we might permit planned hunting, and also trade in game." Today's comprehensive ban on using natural resources does not meet the needs of the current environment, nor do the arguments behind the ban convince those worried about the survival of aboriginal culture.

Chen Chao-jen of the COA cautions: "Many aboriginal communities have disintegrated already, and different communities have different ways of doing things. Not everyone will want to follow the Wutai model." Nevertheless, he says that at least there is currently one path to follow that promises to respect traditional culture while protecting wildlife, so there is no point in putting off a choice.

Another blow to aboriginal culture?

The laws cannot be changed overnight, and even in the aboriginal community there are obstacles. For example, wonders Tu Chuan, although the state now owns the land, if is opened up for legalized hunting, should the traditional rights of the tribal chief be reclaimed? He says that the RNF will have to do a lot of jawboning to win the support of chiefs and church leaders, whose views still carry weight. This is especially the case since there is so much distrust of the government as a result of past experience, and many people are skeptical about what real benefits they will get.

Now that the hunting plan is irretrievably on the table, many Rukai have their own worries. Some don't want to open up the hunting grounds to amateurs from outside. One hunter says that he once brought a group of visitors to Big Ghost Lake. When they came back, they brought tools for collecting plants and found their own way.

Others worry that making hunting a tourist activity could be yet another blow to local culture. Sasala agrees that "restoring hunting is the lesser of two evils." If it is not implemented, aboriginal communities will collapse even more rapidly. Even though the hunting way of life practiced by the aboriginal people for centuries is being turned into an economic resource, it need not-and should not-be merely a superficial tourist attraction.

Of course the hunting plan cannot solve all existing problems, but, says Sasala, aboriginal people don't always want to be complaining and asking for government help. Nor should they be intimidated by existing laws into readily giving up their traditional way of life. The hunting plan is actually a movement on behalf of all of aboriginal society.

It will not be easy to surmount obstacles, and much communication will be needed to relax the law. In the view of Liu Chung-hsi, an associate professor at Taitung Teachers' College who advocates making economic assets out of traditional aboriginal plants, it is difficult to draw up a comprehensive plan for hunting before other obstacles have been overcome. Still, "if Wutai's plan succeeds, and aboriginal people can develop in their home mountains, no longer having to leave home to find work, then a lot of people will benefit."

Zoologists-who are mostly conservationists-also have high hopes for the Wutai plan. "We really need experiments like this in Taiwan today." Even if it fails, problems will be uncovered that can be rectified.

Though outsiders see the plan as an "experiment," hunters have taken it seriously. "Establishing the foundation was great," say Ou Hsin-hsing and Luo Li-wen, who want hunting to be legalized. They emplaced their cameras according to the RNF schedule, and even went to the trouble of learning how to insure the cameras' proper operation. And all this despite the fact that to hunters, the camera is a totally extraneous item.

In autumn and winter, these Rukai, insured against accident and combining the roles of hunter and conservationist, following ancient traditions, go into the mountains to hunt or collect aiyuzi. Its just that this time, besides rifles and traps, they are also carrying two-kilo high-tech devices. Their ancestors can never have imagined anyone would one day have to carry machines to see whether or not there was much animal life left in their mountains.

A fresh start

"Lily seeds are scattered over Rukai land./ We will see the shadow of the clouded leopard leaping the Southern Ailiao River,/ Licking the sweet of our ancestors,/ Which wets the spirit and fresh of the clouded leopard./ When the leopard leads us to look up to the peak of North Tawu Nountain/ The sunlight we see thereinvites us, calls us on..." 

In this poem, written by Rukai teacher for newly opened nursery school, the clouded leopard has become a synonym for the tribe. But the clouded leopard is today listed as an endangered species. How has it disappeared? Some blame the Japanese, who in the occupation era purchased leopard skin. But the real problem, say zoologists, is that big cats need large habitats to survive, so there never could have been very large numbers of them on taiwan, an island, in the first place. So they had little room to adapt to changes in their environment. Today, there is only a tiny possibility that any clouded leopard survive. But if one does, it is most likely to be in the tawu Mountain area of the Rukai, which is as yet relatively undisturbed by development.

And while the last hopefor the clouded leopardlies in these mountains, the descendants of the leopard, living at the foot of the mountain, think abouttheir own chance to get a fresh start.

Amidst calls to return land to the indigenous peoples, scholars hope that the land can be even better managed for sustainable use.

During the "Clouded Leopard" trek, after a hard day on the trails, hikers dined on delicacies like these fish, which are abundant in local streams.

"Now this is an artifact!" Retired elder hunters rest next to the site o f artifacts of an ancient Haucha settlement, and tells stories of the past. Today, young people in New Haucha Village think fondly back on Old Haucha, where they lived as children, but they are not aware that there was an even more ancient Haucha. It was one of the earliest settlements for the West Rukai as they migrated to the Haucha area from eastern Taiwan.

Besides mountain agriculture, what choice is there in an aboriginal vill age? Sadly, increasing cultivation in the mountains is further damaging the environment. The sign warns that this area is subject to landslides during heavy rains.

In hunting culture, both indigenous people and animals are part of the food chain. If commercial factors are introduced to hunting in hopes of developing the aboriginal economy, how can the balance between man and animal be maintained?

The outflow of people from aboriginal communities is even worse than fro m rural Han Chinese villages in Taiwan. These aboriginal elders are making millet cake in a courtyard. Is it for worshipping their ancestors ? Or are they waiting for young people to return to eat the cakes? One of the main goals of restoring hunting is to attract back young people and revive indigenous village life.

To avoid wasting food, hunters handle and smoke game right in the mountains, to store it and take it down the mountain. In order to restore hunting in the future, it will be necessary to convince outsiders that nature will not be over exploited.