ann
(Ann)
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impossible to be certain, there are indications that intensification
of hunting and gathering combined with poaching and environmental
degradation to deplete resources. Both Han migration, broadly respon-
sible forfilched resources and deforested terrain, and Manchu state fora-
ging’s pressure to fulfill excessive annual quotas were unsustainable in
this respect.
Official concern over resource exhaustion was centered on poaching,
which could undermine resource management efforts. In 1684 “large
masses”of ginseng poachers threatened catastrophic depletion of Butha
Ula sable and pearls and may have actually caused a steep decline in
regionalfish and pearl forage a decade later.^131 A series of regulations
was issued between 1730 , the year when banner gathering was formally
ended, and 1802. They attempted to implement a system of ginseng
mountain rotation, with an area subject to two years of gathering, and
then allowed one year of recovery. By 1783 , however, it was admitted
that poaching had undermined this system in Shengjing’s jurisdiction. By
1802 ginseng mountains in Jilin had ceased rotation.^132
Poaching, however, was not the only likely source of exhaustion. In
1686 Shengjing foragers were relieved of their pine nut tribute, which was
to be taken up by Butha Ula, a decision probably influenced by quota
shortfalls that began to emerge around 1669.^133 TheDuyusiproposed
that the shortfall in the annual two-hundred-kilogram tribute be made up
by purchase on the private market in autumn when pine nuts were
cheap.^134 This suggests that although pine nuts were still common in
Fengtian as a whole, they may have been difficult tofind in banner areas
reserved for comparatively intense and highly organized hunter-gatherer
tribute operations.
TheDuyusitended to interpret shortfalls in anthropogenic terms that
were centered on human idleness, incompetence, or malice. Thus, it
suspected a 1670 shortfall in the wild honey quota might be due to“lazy
people.”These culprits might not make consecutive searches of desig-
nated hills as a statutory forager group, but unofficially split up to cover
multiple locales simultaneously, and much less comprehensively. It also
suspected its honey gatherers were being diverted by their own personal
foraging activities. Such doubts reveal theDuyusi’s hostility to informal
foraging, which it held interfered with imperial quotas. The solution was
an increase in administration through the appointment of an official to
oversee honey-gathering activities by this group.^135 In 1690 ,officials
came to a similar conclusion about pine nuts, deciding that some of the
throne’s own foragers were diverting tribute nuts to Fengtian commerce.
102 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
