BALANCING BIODIVERSITY AND NATURAL RESOURCE PROTECTION OBJECTIVE WITH ETHNIC MINORITY AUTONOMY : A CHINESE MODEL

This Article focuses on the regulation of ethnic minority hunting and gathering practices and the awareness of local officials of ethnic minority concerns relating to biodiversity in two ethnic minority regions of China, i.e. Yunnan Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Yunnan and Inner Mongolia have many ethnic minorities who have historically engaged in various practices utilizing natural resources currently considered under threat and are now regulated or proscribed by natural resource and biodiversity conservation law. Yunnan, which is technically not a designated autonomous region (having only autonomous prefectures and counties) under the Constitution, has mountainous areas where local ethnic minority groups continue to engage in hunting and gathering activities for subsistence and as part of their cultural practices. Many of these activities however occur in prefecture/county level autonomous areas where ethnic minorities are concentrated, such as Chuxiong autonomous prefecture. Inner Mongolia was the first autonomous region established by the PRC after the Communist Party came into power in 1949. The studied Inner Mongolian minority group, the Oroqen ethnic group, is well-known for its hunting and gathering practices and can serve as a good case to study how a typical hunting ethnic minority group has evolved and coped with flora and fauna and biodiversity protection efforts by the national and regional governments.