WE run the gauntlet of women, shaking hands and receiving bouquets. The old women smile from tattooed faces, the geometric indigo designs on face and throat indicating their area of origin. The younger women are made-up Myanmar-style, with yellow thanaka paste creating cool circles on the cheeks and streaks on their noses.

From the school veranda the men sound gongs and drums, while one dances wildly in circles, his longyi tucked up to free his hopping legs. Like teenagers might play air-guitar, this man plays air-attack, twisting a pointed knife as if into the belly of an enemy.

They are pleased to receive foreign visitors at the school, which was recently built with funds donated by a foreign embassy, thanks to BANCA’s facilitation.
Through discussions with villagers, I come to understand that these households are living not only on the knife-edge of the mountain range, squeezed between the park and neighbouring villages.

For some, the conservation activities have had a negative impact on their livelihoods. Many households can only yield from three to six months worth of household grain consumption from their farm plots and rely on collecting orchids for the Chinese market, or game hunting.

In the past, a good hunter could get three to four wild pigs a year, each worth about K40,000 in meat. The smaller and more common barking deer might be worth.

K5000 to K10,000, equal to a week or two of rice for one family.
This is why the development activities, such as the self-reliance groups supported by UNDP, are so important.

Gathered inside the school, the women tell us about their savings and loan group. Each week, each group member contributes K100 to the fund, and each member may apply for a loan with the guarantee of two other group members. So far, this group’s fund totals K820,000, two-thirds of which was provided by UNDP as a supplement to the women’s own savings.

Loans are a maximum of K50,000 and interest has been set by the group at 4 percent a month. Women use these loans to buy fresh tubers, which they slice and dry to sell at a profit, or to cover school and book fees at the beginning of the school year, or for healthcare emergencies.

Seeing the success of the initial 18-member group, a second group of 14 women formed just a few weeks before our visit and are now saving to start their loan fund. But they are enthusiastic and confident in their ability to take advantage of this opportunity and to pay back their loans.

Villagers in Natmataung are interested in growing coffee, avocados and fruit trees, a project that is being supported by CARE, UNDP and BANCA with community nurseries, tools, seeds and seedlings and other inputs, as well as technical training.

They are also learning to plant wa-u and pyan-u, tubers originally gathered from the forest that can be cultivated and now fetch a fair price. But agro-forestry and other agricultural improvements are long-term solutions and may not provide food for the family for several years after planting.

Despite the best intentions of the village committees, conservation behaviour cannot be sustained for long without immediate help for livelihoods. One village patrol team in the Natmataung National Park area has already lost five members, who left to seek work in Mandalay and Malaysia.

Customary law is arbitrated by a ng’sa, or mediator – and luckily forest guard Hung Mang, a Mindat local who was seconded to the project by the Forest Department, happens to be one of these traditional mediators.

BANCA project coordinator U Aung Kyaw says, “If it weren’t for Hung Mang’s ability to organise the communities, we would never have been so successful.”
Up to now, only 16 of the more than 80 villages in and around the park have formed local conservation groups and patrol teams.

“It would be best if all of the villages could participate in this program,” said one village leader. “Then they would all agree and all work in the same direction. It would be easier for us to do our jobs.”

With such a network of supporters, the Natmataung conservation movement would be certain sure to spread up and down the steep slopes of the mountain ranges, offering much-needed protection to the endemic white-browed nuthatch and other irreplaceable species in this unique habitat, while securing the watershed on which the livelihoods of the local people depend.