After 22 years, things appear to be moving at the Namdapha National Park in Changlang, Arunachal Pradesh. On January 20, 2006, the park management for the first time organised a meeting between the district administration, state forest officials, the Project Tiger director, and the Lisu , the dominant tribal community in the area. The meeting was long overdue because the Lisu face genuine land shortage but continue to be branded encroachers, as they migrate to the park to continue with wet rice cultivation, their major mode of subsistence.

Focus on solutions The meeting was organised at the initiative of field director L K Pait and his staff. Ati Liakhu Yobin, the Lisu representative, presented the community's problems in a memorandum. They discussed the history of the area, problems related to land shortage, lack of road connection, and lack of healthcare, education and income opportunities with the officials.

The Lisu had two suggestions to make: either push back the park's boundary or resettle Nepalis inhabiting the area (Nepali families are economically better off, with better jobs and landholdings three times bigger than that of the Lisu); and give them more agricultural land in Vijaynagar circle. They also made it clear that they would not settle in areas near Miao, the traditional territory of other tribes (see: