The Kingdom of Rarities (39 page)

Unfortunately, Western explorers of rarity and expatriate conservation biologists in Bhutan are on a fourteen-day visa, just like every other tourist. I could happily have spent another week in lowland Manas National Park, learning about its wildlife and management. But we also wanted to see Bhutan's mountain rarities, so our soon-to-expire
travel documents forced us to move to higher ground. Bumthang, at 2,400 meters above sea level and about 66 kilometers east of Trongsa, was the next destination.

The highway climbed once again into the conifer forest as it undulated toward this mountain town famous among Buddhist historians and religious experts. The next day we hiked through a majestic hemlock and juniper forest to a monastery perched on top of a mountain, where the resident lamas scattered grain to attract several species of rare Himalayan pheasants that lived under their protection. For monks and monasteries to offer sanctuary to endangered wildlife is common across the Himalayas. When George Schaller and Peter Matthiessen went on their search for the snow leopard, they made their base camp a remote monastery in the western Nepal Himalayas. There, the head lama had issued a hunting ban. I had seen the results of a similar kind of ban at Tengboche Monastery, below Mount Everest in Nepal, where musk deer and rare pheasants walked without fear of humans because of a lama's decree.

Our next destination was one of the oldest Buddhist temples in the country. Dating from the sixteenth century, this shrine celebrates the arrival of Buddhism to Bhutan via Buddhism's ambassador Guru Rinpoche. The old monastery was empty at the time of our visit, closed for restoration. At a larger, more active monastery nearby, hundreds of maroon-robed monks chanted in the prayer rooms, milled about the courtyards, or basked in the sunshine. Mincha gave us a guided tour and a discourse on monkdom. “Through teachings and meditation,” he said, “the lamas seek to cultivate the qualities of gentle kindness, unshakable serenity, and wisdom. Eric, you would benefit by trying it.”

Even before Mincha's suggestion, I had been contemplating the interplay of Buddhist teachings and conservation biology. Tara Brach's book had suggested that by offering gentleness and peaceful compassion to all beings, animals as well as humans, the Buddhist philosophy offers a trustworthy route to happiness that is quite different
from the route most Westerners follow. Buddhism replaces the pursuit of materialism with a core philosophy of nonattachment and an acceptance of the impermanence of all things. A viewpoint shaped by gentleness and kindness toward all beings—that was how Buddhism could inform conservation biology, it occurred to me. Bhutan's government tried to live that philosophy and had established a unique nation on Earth that is kind to its rare creatures.

I remembered Tim Flannery, the New Guinea mammal expert (chapter 2), and his story predicting the decline of rare mammals there when local animists gave up their old hunting taboos upon their conversion by Christian missionaries. The spread of Buddhist doctrine, as much a gentle philosophy as an organized religion, seemed to have the opposite effect. Here in Bhutan, and in Buddhism in general, the guiding principle was compassion for all living things. Thus a monk spreads grain for rare pheasants. A monastery protects the home range of a musk deer. A head lama declares hunting off-limits in a valley or on an entire mountain range where a snow leopard roamed in search of blue sheep. A fascination with the practice of this philosophy began to rival my interest in local ecology.

We headed west again, retracing our steps toward Thimpu, but then veered off the main road to the evening's destination, the Phobjikha Valley. After a long day of highway driving, we bumped along another twenty kilometers on a dirt track to reach the village's new guesthouse. Although road weary, we perked up after arriving in the wintering area of the black-necked crane, widely revered in Bhutanese culture as a symbol of longevity. The protection of this large migratory crane was what first drew attention to Bhutan among global conservation circles. The marshlands preferred by the cranes could easily have been drained and cultivated, as has happened in many other countries, but instead the Bhutanese
government preserved the wetlands as feeding areas for these spectacular giant birds. With just 5,000 to 6,000 individuals of the endangered black-necked species left, the nation's decision to protect this area was a conservation milestone.

Black-necked cranes (
Grus nigricollis
) performing a mating dance

Although many long-distance migrants are not considered rare, several of the fifteen crane species have the misfortune of migrating over some of the most hostile terrain on Earth. Such is the case with the western population of the highly endangered Siberian crane, which must traverse areas where guns are prevalent and people are hungry. The birds are harassed and shot during the fall and spring migrations. In contrast, the crane population in Bhutan has increased by 25 percent during the past few years, probably as a result of habitat conservation. Like clockwork, the cranes return each
year from their breeding ground on the Tibetan Plateau between October 23 and 26 and stay until late February. Here they are protected by local village committees and the government. The cranes now attract ecotourists, many of whom join the annual festival that welcomes the huge birds back to Bhutan. Schoolchildren dress up in elaborate crane costumes. Although the cranes had already left for their breeding grounds at the time of our visit, we could imagine the vast wetland alive with the birds.

Early the next morning, under threatening clouds, we met our trekking company guide, his staff, and their donkeys. We would spend the next three days on the Gangte path through the Black Mountains; the trail climbs over three passes, weaving through oldgrowth forests and some of the best upland bird-watching areas in Asia. The route through the forest promised good sightings of satyr tragopans, a rare species of pheasant so named for its head feathers that resemble a satyr's goatlike horns. Everyone admires the most colorful members of the pheasant family; peacocks and ringnecked pheasants belong to this group, as do the crimson fireback and golden pheasants of China. We also hoped to see the Himalayan monal, a huge pheasant cloaked in metallic green, bronze, blue, cinnamon, and purple, with a distinctive wirelike crest of feathers. We listened intently for the whistled “
Kur-leiu
” of the monal and the wailing “
Waah! waah!
” of the tragopan as we began our trek through the forest.

Progress was slow, not so much because of the altitude as because I wanted to stop and look at every bird and plant we passed. Naturalists instinctively know how to practice what Buddhist teachers call the sacred art of pausing. For the naturalist, the best birding sometimes happens when you find a good place to sit and the birds come to you. No more life list, no more fixated desire. Simply wait, hands on binoculars, for something unexpected to happen. For the Western birders on a deadline who all but require ticking so many species on their life list by such-and-such a point in the journey, this philosophy is anathema; the birding trip must be strategized
with the cold-blooded efficiency of a US Navy SEAL operation. For the Buddhist, pausing is a way to stop, notice, and then release thoughts and desires that crowd the coop of the hyperactive mind. My allegiance was starting to shift.

Once we had gained the first pass, we dropped into another deeply forested valley. Far from any village, we entered an old-growth hemlock and juniper forest. Here the trees were one and a half meters in diameter and as straight and tall as the masts of great schooners. Underneath was a dense understory of the sweet-smelling cream-colored flowers of
Daphne
, a common ornamental shrub in the United States and in the Himalayas used for paper production. The bright yellow pea flowers of
Piptanthus
lit up the trails. In the forest were rhododendron shrubs as well as trees. We also found azaleas, barberry, wild clematis, and other shrubs whose close relatives appear in gardens back home. As we started up the final pass, we were greeted by a hailstorm. Happily, the storm passed quickly, and the trekking company's guides had hot tea and a bonfire waiting at a camp just below the pass.

The next day's walk to Kokotkha offered another day in the old-growth hemlock forest and yet another dimension to our trip. What had started as a hike became a virtual walking meditation on rarity in nature, but not as one might typically describe a quest for rarity, looking vainly for the last of the last. Instead we were immersed in rarity made common—and enjoyed the uniqueness of being in a place where the species one was observing were rare everywhere else in the Himalayas, because of hunting and habitat loss, but numerous and often rather tame here.

Spotted nutcrackers and spotted laughing thrushes seemed to track our progress through the forest. Above us flew long-tailed minivets, the high-elevation version of the scarlet minivet. We were resting in a forest clearing as the minivets sallied for insects when several large horseflies descended on me. Mincha moved swiftly to dispatch one that had designs on my exposed leg. A startled silence followed. We were unsure of what to make of the swift and sudden
execution by a devout Buddhist. “It is only stunned, not dead,” he assured us (or perhaps, in denial, assured himself). “Mincha, how
should
a devout Buddhist deal with ectoparasites like horseflies and leeches?” I asked. We were walking through areas that were undoubtedly thick with leeches in the wet season. The resident Buddhist teacher avoided my question.

Over a fabulous dinner of soup, chicken curry, vegetables, and canned fruit and cream, followed by whiskey, we talked about the rare mammals that might be just beyond the tent fly. We had yet to see a musk deer bounding through the oak-rhododendron forests that lay ahead, or a red panda moseying through the bamboo brakes. A Nepalese biologist, Bijaya Kattel, who had studied musk deer in the Everest region of Nepal, discovered the oddest behavior for this deer: they often climbed into the low, spreading branches of trees to feed on lichens. Musk deer in the Himalayas were like tree kangaroos in New Guinea, a species hardly designed for the arboreal niche yet nimble enough to exploit a valuable source of food above ground level. Musk deer males are famous for the scent produced by a gland below their belly. Even the droppings of this primitive deer carry a fragrance.

Tara Brach offers a parable about this species, with some poetic license on wildlife biology:

A legend from ancient India tells of a musk deer who, one fresh spring day, detected a mysterious and heavenly fragrance in the air. It hinted of peace, beauty and love, and like a whisper beckoned him onward. Compelled to find its source, he set out, determined to search the whole world over. He climbed forbidding and icy mountain peaks, padded through steamy jungles, trekked across endless desert sands. Wherever he went, the scent was there, faint yet always detectable. At the end of his life, exhausted from his relentless search, the deer collapsed. As he fell his horn pierced his belly, and suddenly the air was filled with the heavenly scent. As he lay dying, the musk deer realized that the fragrance had all along been emanating from within himself.