Human beings have been kept mobile migrating from one place to another in search of livelihoods forming human organizations and human societies, during the course of evolution, and settled around adapting different occupations and professions. Pastoralism is one such activity being practiced by the pastoral communities who depend on forests, pastures, etc., in rearing and grazing of cattle and other livestock.
However, a heavy pressure is seen exerted on those grazing spots causing to shrink thoroughly owing to the reasons of development projects initiated responding to the wider socio-political and economic changes taking place worldwide.
As a result the pastoral communities face scarce of traditional resources forcing them to find new spots as alternative pastures for the livestock.In this background, this paper presents the strategies adopted as coping mechanisms among the pastoral groups in Bangus valley in Jammu and Kashmir state in Himalayan regions in India, where a new ecotourism project has been undertaken by the government.
As this project has forged roads and other infrastructure development in the locality, there is alteration of grazing routes and the spots, resulting to eroding of pastures in the valley posing challenges before the pastoral communities.
However given the precipitation of the crisis situation, as the paper brings out, there are the amicable social arrangements being made redistributing those grazing spots among the tribal and non-tribal, nomadic and semi-nomadic, local and non-local pastoral communities such as the Bakerwals, the Gujjers, Pohl and Chopan, in the valley. The core zone, buffer zone and the transition zones, highlighted in the paper, represent different levels of terrains in Bangus valley used by different pastorals groups following definite rules, adds significance to the arguments made in the presentation apart from other such objectives.
