{"id":15669,"date":"2020-03-10T20:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T11:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2020\/mar\/10\/i-swapped-my-gun-for-binoculars-indias-hunters-turn-to-conservation-aoe"},"modified":"2020-03-10T20:00:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T11:00:30","slug":"i-swapped-my-gun-for-binoculars-indias-hunters-turn-to-conservation-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=15669","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I swapped my gun for binoculars\u2019: India\u2019s hunters turn to conservation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Villagers are downing their weapons and protecting swathes of ancient forest and its wildlife in Nagaland state<\/p>\n<p>It is Sunday in Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, and like many Naga, Gwasinlo Thong has spent the morning in church. A tall, elegant man in a crisp navy suit, he hands over a bag of guava from his garden as we sit down to talk. \u201cWhen I was a child we used to hear tigers roaring in the forest around our village,\u201d he says, over a cup of sweet milky tea. \u201cBut even in my lifetime the birds and mammals have disappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One of the seven states that make up India\u2019s tribal north-east, Nagaland\u2019s mountains form a jagged spine along the Indo-Myanmar border. Home to the Naga, Tibeto-Burman people made up of an estimated 70 tribes, it is part of the Indo-Burma \u201cbiodiversity hotspot\u201d, one of 36 such regions identified globally. Ninety-two species of mammal have been documented here, as well as 490 species of butterfly, 500 species of bird and 360 species of orchid. But Thong, a local conservationist, isn\u2019t the first person to bemoan the disappearance of wildlife.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/2020\/mar\/10\/i-swapped-my-gun-for-binoculars-indias-hunters-turn-to-conservation-aoe\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Villagers are downing their weapons and protecting swathes of ancient forest and its wildlife in Nagaland stateIt is Sunday in Kohima, the capital of Nagaland, and like many Naga, Gwasinlo Thong has spent the morning in church. A tall, elegant man in a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[265,337,456,1216,65,62,61,94,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-birds","category-conservation","category-conservation-and-indigenous-people","category-environment","category-india","category-south-and-central-asia","category-wildlife","category-world-news"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15671,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15669\/revisions\/15671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}