Transition from a Traditional Nature and Game Reserve to a National Park: the Case of Khunzhrav Valley in Northern Pakistan

Governance systems aimed at protecting natural resources, and especially their biodiversity, offer a huge gamut of conservation approaches, tools and intervention patterns, including the management of nature reserves. Set in this scenario, the paper follows the transition process that took the Khunzhrav 1 valley, a traditional nature and game reserve of the former Hunza State, to a protected area in the form of Khunzhrav National Park (KNP). Dissolved in 1974, the Principality of Hunza was declared part of the Northern Areas, known at present as Gilgit-Baltistan Region (Pakistan). In April 1975, the communal pasturelands within the valley were converted into the Khunzhrav National Park, which was the first such park notified in the Region of Gilgit-Baltistan. The abolition of the Hunza State, and the following transformation of the valley into a national park had a double effect: the transition process led the local community to new conditions hampering over their ancestral rights to natural resources, particularly grazing and forest rights; concomitantly, their social transition from an old royalist towards a new democratic system of governance was affected by a row of multilevel changes. The challenges and strategies that emerged as consequences of the KNP notification process are examined in the paper along with the forms of mobilisation that have been adopted by the relevant stakeholders, namely the Khunzhrav community and the local government: similarities and differences in values between the traditional model of the former Hunza State, and modern conservation patterns of the IUCN Worldwide park model (International Union for Conservation of Nature), introduced by the Government of Pakistan on the same valley, are comparatively explored with particular attention to the issue of communal rights as predicted by the related customary laws addressing the governance of natural resources. Being mainly founded on empirical research, yet underpinned by relevant bibliographic sources, the contents of the present study bring original fieldwork results, especially in terms of experiences, perceptions and opinions expressed by local community members with regard to the phenomenon of conservation models as applied to their native land, the Khunzhrav valley.