‘I swapped my gun for binoculars’: India’s hunters turn to conservation

Villagers are downing their weapons and protecting swathes of ancient forest and its wildlife in Nagaland state

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. "When I was a child we used to hear tigers roaring in the forest around our village," he says, over a cup of sweet milky tea. "But even in my lifetime the birds and mammals have disappeared."

One of the seven states that make up India's tribal north-east, Nagaland's 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 "biodiversity hotspot", 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't the first person to bemoan the disappearance of wildlife.