There was a time when the Hangul did not need a protected area to survive. It moved through the forests and meadows of Kashmir as naturally as the seasons themselves, following old routes between feeding grounds and forests, descending into lower valleys in winter and retreating towards safer slopes as the seasons changed. These were not boundaries drawn on a map. They were simply the landscape the Hangul knew.
And then our landscape began to change.
Roads cut across old routes. Settlements expanded into open spaces. Orchards spread. Fences appeared. Human activity pushed deeper into mountain valleys. Forest edges became crowded and the spaces between them grew narrower. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the Hangul’s world began to close.
Today, when we speak about the Hangul (Kashmir stag) we often speak in the language of numbers – population estimates, breeding programmes, protected areas and conservation targets. All of these matter. But behind those numbers lies a much larger question : Have we left the Hangul enough Kashmir to live in. The question changes how we understand its decline.
The Hangul is not simply an endangered animal that needs to be kept safe inside a protected forest. It is a species whose history is intertwined with the landscape of Kashmir itself. Its survival depends not only on what happens inside a wildlife sanctuary, but also on what happens beyond its boundaries.
A sanctuary can protect a population. It cannot, by itself, compensate for a landscape that has been fragmented around it.
The Hangul needs forests, meadows, water, food and security. But it also needs to move between them. Wild animals survive not merely by occupying a place, but by moving through a landscape. They need seasonal feeding grounds, access to water, shelter and escape from disturbance. When the connections between these places are severed by roads, settlements or fences, habitat can remain on a map while becoming increasingly unusable in reality.
This matters particularly for the Hangul because it is a shy and elusive animal. It does not seek human company. Its instinct is to retreat from disturbance and remain within quieter parts of its habitat. Its shyness is therefore more than a characteristic of the species, it is a reminder of the kind of landscape it needs – a landscape with refuge, connected forests and places where it can move without encountering human activity at every turn.
We have become very good at drawing boundaries around wildlife. We designate a protected area, put up a signboard and declare that a particular patch of forest belongs to wildlife. But nature does not understand administrative boundaries. A Hangul does not know where a sanctuary ends, and a forest corridor does not stop because a development plan begins.
If we genuinely want the species to survive, conservation must therefore extend beyond the sanctuary. It must become a question of coexistence.
That does not mean stopping development. The Valley needs roads, houses, agriculture, tourism and livelihoods. Nor does conservation require us to turn Kashmir into a museum. But development cannot mean occupying every available space and leaving wildlife with whatever fragments remain.
There has to be another way.
Perhaps the first step is recognising that the Hangul was here before many of the lines we have drawn across its landscape.
For centuries, people and wildlife shared these mountains. The relationship was never perfect, but there was an understanding, sometimes conscious, sometimes simply inherited that the natural world was not entirely ours.
That idea is deeply familiar to Kashmir’s cultural memory. The Valley’s Sufi – Rishi tradition has long carried a message of humility before nature, compassion towards living beings and restraint in the use of what the earth provides. It does not place human beings outside creation, but within it.
Perhaps we need to recover something of that wisdom because conservation ultimately asks a difficult question : What are we willing to leave behind for something that cannot speak for itself. A road may be important. A building may be necessary. An orchard may sustain a family. A project may create employment, but sometimes the answer cannot always be yes. Sometimes a road can be moved, a fence can be redesigned, a construction project can be relocated, an open corridor must remain open. Sometimes development has to make a small sacrifice so that another species does not pay the entire price.
This is not anti – development.
It is responsible development.
Around the world, wildlife has survived alongside expanding human societies where landscapes have been reconnected, movement routes restored and infrastructure designed with wildlife in mind. The recovery of the Eurasian lynx in parts of Europe offers an important lesson. Its return has not required people to abandon farms, villages or forests. It has required landscapes to be managed so that wildlife can move through them and communities can coexist with it. The lesson for Kashmir is not that the Hangul’s future can simply be copied from somewhere else. It is that coexistence can be designed.
For the Hangul, this means identifying and securing critical movement routes between fragmented habitats, mapping them before further development blocks them, creating wildlife – sensitive crossings where roads interrupt movement, regulating fencing in important habitats and ensuring that new infrastructure does not sever the remaining ecological connections.
But it also means something much simpler – leaving some places alone.
Not every meadow needs a building. Not every forest edge needs a road. Not every open space needs to be fenced. Not every mountain landscape needs to become a destination.
For a shy animal like the Hangul, sometimes the most effective conservation measure is simply – quiet.
And this is where the Hangul becomes more than a conservation issue. It becomes a question about the kind of Kashmir we want to build.
A Valley in which every open landscape is eventually occupied may be economically active, but it will also be ecologically poorer. A Valley that protects its forests, keeps ecological connections intact, respects wildlife movement and plans infrastructure around nature will be more resilient not only for the Hangul, but for people as well. The landscapes that allow wildlife to move also protect watersheds, regulate water, reduce erosion and strengthen the ecological health of the Valley. Saving a path for the Hangul may therefore save much more than a path. It may save a part of the landscape that sustains us all. The Hangul has never demanded much from us. It has lived quietly in its forests, moving with the seasons, appearing briefly in the open and disappearing again into the trees. Perhaps that is why its decline has been so easy to overlook. A noisy species might have forced us to notice. The Hangul simply retreats when the world around it becomes too crowded. But there is a point beyond which retreat is no longer possible.
If forests shrink, meadows disappear, routes are broken and every quiet place becomes a destination, where does a shy animal go.
There may come a morning when we walk through the forests of Kashmir and find everything we built exactly where we left it – roads, fences, resorts, orchards and settlements.
Everything except the Hangul.
And that should frighten us.
Because its disappearance would not mean that the Hangul failed to adapt to a changing Kashmir.
It would mean that we failed to leave a Kashmir worth adapting to.
The writer is a businessman.