Championing the animals the world forgot

Published in 2008

The life of German veterinary surgeon, Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, has been transformed by her links with the Raika people of north-west India. The mystical link between this nomadic community and the camel has inspired her to take on a key role defending not only the Raika but also pastoralists and their livestock around the world as their grazing lands and their way of life come under pressure from global forces beyond their control.

The Raika (or Rebari) people of Rajasthan, in north-west India believe their close relationship with the camel was ordained by the Hindu gods. Just as other Hindu castes have the god-given task of serving as priests or warriors, the Raika are convinced that they were created by Lord Shiva to breed and herd camels.

The camel is at the heart of Raika life, providing a means of transport and milk, as well as rich, life-enhancing symbolism. Like many other pastoralist people, the Raika view their animals not as private property, but as a community asset that must be stewarded for future generations. So essential to their way of life is this animal that when a handful of Raika people sold some of their female camels - which were subsequently sent for slaughter - it raised the alarm. Hence, Raika community leaders held an emergency meeting and drafted a letter to send to the district administrators calling for the sale of camels to be banned because it marked "the beginning of the end of our way of life".

The way of life of the Raika is indeed under threat. The combination of globalisation, new breeding technology, large-scale agricultural business, rigorous regulations covering foodstuffs, and the rush to take ownership of genetic property rights are making it more and more difficult for the Raika to live in the way their ancestors have done for hundreds of years. Ironically, some of the threats to pastoralists' livestock and culture come from people, including scientists, with good intentions, such as those who lobby for vast stretches of land to be set aside as protected reserves - thereby depriving herders and their animals of grazing land.

Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, an Associate Laureate of the 2002 Rolex Awards, has been working with and campaigning for the Raika people and their animals for 17 years. Originally from the German town of Ober-Ramstadt, she qualified as a veterinary surgeon in the 1970s, but was not enthusiastic about routine work in a practice. "All the decisions, including possible treatment to save an animal on a farm, for example, are made on a commercial basis - is it economically worth spending the money on treatment to save the animal?" she says. Instead, she decided to collaborate with archaeologists to help them identify animal bones found in excavations, work that led her to Jordan in the late 1970s where she came into close contact with dromedaries (one-humped camels) and their Bedouin breeders.

After completing her doctorate, on the domestication of the camel, at the Hanover Institute of Zoology in 1981, Köhler-Rollefson returned to Jordan to work at Yarmouk University. In 1990, her links with the camel were strengthened when she obtained a grant to research camel pastoralism in Rajasthan - India has the world's third-largest stock of camels, after Sudan and Somalia, and most of India's camels are in the state of Rajasthan.

Here she had her first encounter with the Raika people. "They look so amazing," she says of their traditional way of dressing with turbans and garments in rich reds and gold contrasted with white. But far more important to her was the strength of their relationship with animals. "They believe that without camels, there would be no Raika," she says. "You can't imagine how much that moved me. They have that connection to animals that I had found was missing in the western practice of veterinary science."

Initially working at a research centre in Rajasthan, Köhler-Rollefson found that the institute's objectives were too far removed from the practical problems that herdsmen were facing. Throughout the 1990s, she worked more and more closely with the Raika people, helping to treat their camels for the various diseases that affect them, and publishing, in 2001, a "Field Manual of Camel Diseases", written with two colleagues. She shared her time between Germany and Rajasthan where, as she was gradually accepted into the conservative, closed society of Raikas, she realised that to protect the camel, the whole Raika way of life needed to be saved. Her Rolex Award in 2002 helped her pursue that goal and, most of all, "it gave me confidence; the fact that the Rolex Awards jury had chosen my project made me determined to continue."

There are about 500,000 Raika, almost all in Rajasthan, but Köhler-Rollefson says that as they lose access to their traditional grazing lands - which they do not own - their way of life and their camels will disappear. Seeking ways to support them, she has helped them to set up a project making camel-milk products, such as low-calorie ice cream, at Jaisalmer, in Rajasthan, near the border with Pakistan. However, that is a small-scale operation, and she has long realised that a much broader, "structural" solution is needed to save the Raika and their herds.

In Germany, she set up the League for Pastoral Peoples (LPP) to defend pastoralists' rights worldwide, and in India she helped set up Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan, a non-governmental organisation to lead regional efforts to save the camel and lobby the Indian government.

Since the 1990s, Dr Köhler-Rollefson has dramatically enlarged her vision and objectives as she noticed that, like the Raika, the way of life of herders worldwide – and their herds – is going under extreme pressure from global forces.

Almost without being aware of it, the world is gradually losing one of its major assets, the product of a combination of human ingenuity and natural resources. For hundreds or thousands of years, pastoralists have been breeding domestic animals, adapting them to their environment and to human needs. "According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations [FAO], which has the global mandate for the conservation of domestic animal diversity," says Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, "about one-third of the 5,000 officially documented livestock breeds are threatened with extinction and are dying out at the rate of almost two breeds per week."

She explains that livestock have been largely forgotten in the modern movement of concern for animals. "Unfortunately, the livestock kept by pastoralists fall through all the institutional gaps. Wildlife conservationists scorn pastoralist livestock as 'domestic' animals and therefore inimical to the environment and wildlife. Animal scientists, on the other hand, compare pastoralist breeds negatively with high-performance breeds. It might be helpful if we stopped looking at domestic and wild animals as a dichotomy. Rather, there is a fluid border between them, and the livestock of pastoralists retain many characteristics of wild animals."

Although the tide has been turning in recent years, with organisations like the FAO paying greater attention to livestock, most of the solutions to the problem proposed by governments and scientists are far from adequate, according to the Rolex Awards Laureate. Typical solutions are ad hoc projects to preserve particular breeds within a limited environment, or to put them in zoos or preserve the breeds' genetic patterns cryogenically by freezing them. "If you want to save a breed of animal, you can't just put it in a zoo or preserve it in some other artificial way," she says. "You need to keep everything, the animal and its context."

She also disagrees with the claim that super-breeds, which produce more meat or eggs than traditional breeds, are the answer to the nutritional needs of a growing world population. Köhler-Rollefson quotes the example of a breed of pigs developed in Canada and raised in China being fed on soybeans grown on land cleared of rainforest in Brazil. "This is clearly not a good solution," she says. "There is nothing in China for this breed to eat, whereas pigs that have been developed over centuries by local pig farmers are used to feeding on local produce. Nothing is wasted."

At the world's first International Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, called by the FAO and held in Interlaken, Switzerland, last September, Köhler-Rollefson led a delegation of Raika people and also represented the LIFE Network, an international group of community and non-governmental organisations, including the LPP, campaigning for livestock keepers' rights. The Interlaken conference brought together representatives of all member countries of the FAO. Köhler-Rollefson was a member of a key panel, set up by the FAO to answer questions, and also lobbied the delegates to make them aware of the importance of pastoralists' rights.

After the conference she praised the delegates representing African countries for speaking up for herders' rights and said she regretted the fact that little support came from western countries. However, she welcomed the final communiqué of the international gathering, which recognises the importance of indigenous knowledge and the involvement of farmers and pastoralists in upholding livestock diversity. "Now we just hope that governments are serious about the commitments they have made in this respect, especially regarding capacity-building of livestock-keeping communities, as well as the recognition of their traditional rights," she says.

Despite the importance of the issues under discussion, the Interlaken meeting received little media coverage. But, Köhler-Rollefson warns, if everyone is truly serious about ensuring that future generations have good nourishment, the world must not risk the loss of so many breeds that have been adapted over the centuries for food needs. "Herders and their animals not only enhance the landscape, they also represent important bio-cultural heritage for all humankind."

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