Yu Jiahua

I was born in the 1950s. In those times life was very hard. If one wanted to live a bit better, they needed a special skill. When I was 14, I learned how to hunt from my elders, which gave my family and me hope for living.

In the 1960s and 1970s, there was plenty of wildlife around Mt. Jiuding where our ancestors grew up. But later in the 1970s, when state land was contracted to households, the number of poachers exploded from a very few to over one thousand. This was because everyone wanted to improve their lives. By the 1990s, many animal species around the mountain had significantly decreased. Poachers would bring days of provisions up in the mountains but return empty-handed. After a period of this hardship and letdown, these poachers became more harsh. They organized into groups of seven people. Two would set fire to the base of the mountain while five others with guns would wait at the top to hunt the fleeing animals. In the span of a few years, thousands of acres of Mt. Jiuding had been burned, and many species were locally extinct. When my brother and I realized this, we were moved to do something. We believed we had to act so that future generations could still have a life on Mt. Jiuding. This is how my brother and I started our work to persuade and stop poachers.