Buddhist monks have become increasingly visible in environmental movements in the last few decades, including in Arunachal Pradesh, India, my fieldwork site. Monks in environmental protests have contributed to the popular representation of Buddhism as ecological. A review of existing literature suggests that what we are looking at is a re-interpretation of Buddhist traditional philosophy by modern environmentally conscious people and contemporary Buddhists. I argue that as anthropologists, we have to note that while Buddhism can help mobilise lay activism, local practices about the environment do not often overlap with Buddhist doctrine. I illustrate this through the example of the ban on yak meat in Arunachal Pradesh, which is linked to wider Hindu nationalist politics in India. Environmental activities in the Buddhist Himalayas cannot be understood simply through the lens of Buddhism and one has to adopt a more pluralistic approach that is accommodating of customs that do not fit within an imagined “environmental identity” (Sharma 2009). I propose Himalayan environmentalism as an alternative to Buddhist environmentalism, not to disregard the role of Buddhist belief but to show how Himalayan environmentalism goes beyond Buddhism in scope. Second, my intention is not to propose a uniform model for the Himalaya, but to point to the processes at work between culture, politics, and ecology, and to the role of power in fashioning environmental identities. I support my argument with empirical data from my own fieldwork and those of scholars working in other parts of the Himalaya.