| During
a visit to Palas with WWF’s GIS expert, Salman Ashraf,
a discussion was initiated about the boundary of Palas. The
watershed area of Palas is known from satellite image, but we
soon found out that a large part of the watershed area is not
solely used by Palasi people. From the discussion with the porters
who were with us, it slowly became apparent that Chur nullah
is used both by Palasis, people from Allai (looking at a satellite
image of Allai it is easy to conclude that the Allai people
have no grazing grounds at all) and marginal grazers.
Considering the social setup of the Palasi people and their
distrust of outsiders, this is quite an amazing fact, it also
brings up questions such as who owns the forests in upper
Chur, where there are no permanent settlements but good forest
tracts do exist, they even have prescriptions in the Palas
Forest Working Plan. If one looks at the old divisional boundary,
the division line runs straight through Chur nullah though
apparently it has been revised to include all the Palasi villages.
It also became apparent that this issue has been a source of
feuds in the past, especially between the Allai and Palasi clans,
who seem to have settled down now. But still there are many
other questions that came to mind after the initial discovery.
Out of interest I visited the lower regions of Chur, having
little time to travel the whole length of it. Starting from
Woolbela, we started our journey early in the morning walking
across the beautiful area where the two nullahs meet to give
birth to the Musha’ga. What once was a big village (Dombela)
with satellite hamlets now remains uncultivated land after the
1992 floods. The impact of this flood can be seen at Muchaki,
where the inhabitants have literally built straight up the mountain
slope, building house on top of house.
As we had already ascended to an altitude
of about 7000 ft, the habitat resembled much to that of Ilobek
nullah with a mixed coniferous/deciduous forest and a shrub
layer of Viburnam and Indigofera. Looking up at Muchaki nullah
it was obvious that it is a prime western tragopan habitat
and previous survey reports have identified good tragopan
population in this nullah.
We traveled up to Ghazan nullah, in fact just short of it
due to a difficult cliff face crossing and then returned,
as I had seen enough to warrant another, more detailed trip.
There are no main settlements on the actual nullah, only one
large summer settlements above the Chur River (Gadar) and
to me this seemed unusual. Definitely the area is prone to
floods and is apparently less stable than the other nullah,
I also considered the fact that it acts as a line of control
between the Palasis and Allaiwal, only been used as a refuge
from either side in case of an enmity. But the question remains,
socially, where does Palas end and Allai start, and who has
rights to utilize its resources and does it fall under PCPD
‘umbrella’ of activities?
On the way, we met an inhabitant of Muchaki who had shifted
to Chur nullah due to an enmity. Despite the fact that he
had moved his whole family and was presently living under
a rock, this did not stop him from treating us like royal
guests, placing us outside the rock, serving fresh milk and
bread followed by tea!
The name “Chur” may come from the word ‘chura’
(Dr. Wali Quershi, personal communication) meaning “wide”
and certainly many areas of the nullah are unnaturally wide
for Palas, however no habitation can be found, the reason
maybe being that risk of flood is higher in Chur compared
to the other nullah that feeds into the Musha’ga.
The ‘Chur nullah’ phenomenon is very interesting
and could be an anthropologist’s dream (or nightmare)
of how the two main tribes interacted in the past and how
they live together today, it is also an important area of
natural resource, especially for mammals such as Musk Deer
and perhaps other ungulates, it is certainly well known as
a good area for Morel collection and should not be forgotten
in the plans of PCDP!
One last word on this subject, is all this mentioned in
our baseline report? If not, it should be!
Rab Nawaz
PO-BDC
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