Srinagar| WTNS | Aug 21:For decades, officialdom has announced schemes, conservation plans, and surveys. Each census is followed by headlines, each meeting by assurances of protection. Yet, the ground reality remains unchanged. The Hangul refuses to cross the threshold that would guarantee stability.

By Agha Syed Amin Musvi | Source: Jahangir Rashid

The irony is painful. Kashmir prides itself on the Hangul as its state animal. Its antlers appear in school textbooks, tourism posters, and government emblems. Folklore remembers it as a creature of grace. Yet in practice, the Hangul is boxed into Dachigam, a national park that was never designed to carry the burden of an entire species.

A Species in Stagnation

‘’If we are expecting that the Hangul Kashmir’s famed red stag will revive its population while being confined to the 141 square kilometers of Dachigam, then we are fooling ourselves. The numbers will remain stagnant, the decline will be inevitable, and the species, already hovering at just around 300, will continue to exist in a fragile, almost ornamental form.’’

For decades, officialdom has announced schemes, conservation plans, and surveys. Each census is followed by headlines, each meeting by assurances of protection. Yet, the ground reality remains unchanged. The Hangul refuses to cross the threshold that would guarantee stability.

And unless the fundamentals are addressed corridors, connectivity, and habitat spread the Kashmiri stag will continue to live on the edge, biologically and symbolically.

As senior journalist Jehangir Rashid has written, “Numbers do not tell the whole story. Stability on paper should not be confused with security in the wild. The Hangul may not vanish overnight, but it is slowly being drained of its future.”

The Illusion of Survival

In the early twentieth century, around 5,000 Hangul roamed Kashmir’s forests, from Kishtwar

in the south to Gurez in the north. Partition and the Line of Control cut off natural ranges. Deforestation and poaching reduced their numbers. By the 1980s, the population collapsed below 200. Since then, conservation measures have prevented extinction, but they have not ensured growth.

This stagnation is deceptive. Thirty years of numbers hovering around 300 gives an illusion of survival. It is like a patient kept alive on life support neither dying nor recovering. And in that illusion, complacency thrives. Authorities point to the census figures as “encouraging,” but the truth is the species remains trapped in a genetic bottleneck, its recovery potential shrinking each year.

Dachigam Cannot Carry the Burden Alone

The irony is painful. Kashmir prides itself on the Hangul as its state animal. Its antlers appear in school textbooks, tourism posters, and government emblems. Folklore remembers it as a creature of grace. Yet in practice, the Hangul is boxed into Dachigam, a national park that was never designed to carry the burden of an entire species.

Conservation reduced to fencing in animals and counting them twice a year is not conservation at all. It is containment. Corridors are the missing link. Wildlife biologists like Dr. Khursheed Ahmad of SKUAST ‘’ quoted by Jehangir Rashid’’ have argued repeatedly: “Without restoring connectivity between Dachigam and other ranges like Tral, Overa-Aru, and Wangat, the Hangul has no future.”

In Kashmiri saying: “Hangul chu vanas gav, vanas chu hangulas gav” the Hangul is the forest’s song, the forest is the Hangul’s song. Today that song is broken. Roads slice through habitat, villages expand into grazing lands, and livestock compete for food. An animal once at the centre of Kashmir’s ecological harmony has been reduced to a relic inside a reserve.

Lessons We Ignore

The pandemic briefly showed us what could be. When lockdowns silenced human activity, radio-collared Hangul were recorded venturing further, reclaiming spaces they had abandoned. Nature responded immediately to reduced disturbance. This was the clearest evidence that freer movement equals healthier populations. Yet this lesson has been buried under routine officialdom.

If we are expecting the Hangul to multiply without giving it corridors, we are deceiving ourselves. And if we are satisfied with bare minimum survival, then we must admit that we are letting a state symbol die a slow death.
Culture Without Reference

The loss is not only ecological, it is cultural. Kashmir’s Wanvun traditional wedding songs invoke the Hangul as a metaphor for beauty and grace. To lose the animal is to rob the songs of meaning. Imagine future generations hearing, “teli ye Hangul jayi” (she walks like a Hangul), without ever having seen one. Folklore without reference becomes emptiness.

Poets, too, tied the stag to the landscape. It was a figure of elegance, of untamed dignity. To reduce it now to a rare curiosity inside Dachigam is to strip Kashmir’s culture of one of its living symbols.

Rhetoric vs Reality

Here lies the biggest contradiction. Budgets are sanctioned, awareness campaigns launched, staff trained. Yet the core problem remains unaddressed. Corridor restoration requires tough decisions: regulating livestock grazing, halting encroachment, curbing construction. These are politically inconvenient, and hence, avoided. It is easier to hold workshops, print posters, and issue press releases.

But conservation is not a slogan. It is visible in the forest floor, in safe passage across valleys, in genetic diversity of offspring. Until these are ensured, every rupee spent is cosmetic.

As Jehangir Rashid once observed in a column, “We have made a habit of mistaking ceremony for action. When it comes to Hangul, we cannot afford that confusion any longer.”

A Narrow Window of Hope

All is not yet lost. Recent sightings of Hangul beyond Dachigam in Tral, Kangan, and even near Overa-Aru show the species is willing to reclaim old ranges if given the chance. If corridors are secured and human disturbance reduced, recovery is possible. But the time frame is narrow. Delay will mean genetic weakening beyond repair.

If we do not act, the Hangul will go the way of the Markhor once common in Kashmir, now extinct in the valley and seen only across the border. We will be left with nostalgia, poetry, and museum specimens. ‘’ Jehangir Rashid cautions ‘’

The Ǫuestion We Must Face

To save the Hangul is not just to save an animal. It is to protect Kashmir’s ecological balance, preserve its cultural vocabulary, and honour a moral responsibility. If the forest loses its stag, the valley loses a part of its soul.

The question is not whether the Hangul can be saved. The science is clear, the solutions known, the corridors mapped. The question is whether we care enough to act beyond token gestures. And if we do not, we must accept the consequence: a Kashmir where the Hangul survives only in paintings, textbooks, and memory not in the wild where it belongs.

Reference Jehangir Rashid, Srinagar

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