Forest Resource Development
Implementing Forest Management Principles

By Khilendra Basnyat

THE forest area has been adequately degraded in Nepal. Valleys, which were covered with forests some decades ago, have been cleared in many areas.

In fact, decrease in forests means less firewood, fodder and timber. It means the loss of soil fertility, increased soil erosion and the degradation of fragile land. It also means changes in the water supply for agriculture and energy as well as increased flooding caused by rapid runoff.

Tropical moist forests represent one of the densest terrestrial ecosystems of Nepal. Only a small segment of these where human activity has had little impact on the ecosystem remains intact. In most tropical moist deciduous forests, human interference including logging and agriculture, has resulted in great damage.

Increasing population and a scarcity of agricultural land has increased the pressure to convert forestland to agricultural settlements.

The malaria eradication of malaria in the tarai has resulted in an ever-increasing number of migrants from the Middle Mountain to the tarai.

In the middle mountains, considerable forests were earlier converted to grazing land and then to farmland. However, in the tarai, government resettlement schemes, as well as migrants from the Middle Mountains converted land directly from forests to farmland.

Additional increases in farmland during the past four decades have taken place in marginal middle mountain land. Such increases in farmland are likely to come from the conversation of the remaining tarai forests to agriculture. If the present trend persists, it is likely to all of the tarai forest will be converted to farmland in order to feed the runaway population.

Overgrazing by livestock has resulted in the continuing degradation of forest resources by eating seeds and tree seedling and trampling both the seeds and seedlings.

While fodder consumption does not directly reduce the forest area, the destruction of the shrubs and grass layer may be the chief reason for forest degradation leading to increased soil erosion as a result of the depleted ground cover and compacted soil.

Actually, population growth and a growing demand for fodder, firewood and land clearing, as well as institutional factors have caused deforestation.

The rate of decline of the forest cover in the tarai still continues to remain high, largely due to population boom across the country in general and tarai region in particular. Since more trees were declared up for human settlement or cultivation, during the second half of this century, Charkose Jhadi preserved during the Rana regime as a filter zone, began to deplete.

Likewise, forests in Chure hills in the eastern parts have nearly been cleared up. In the western parts, although the forests are still surviving there, they are under threat. Incidents of logging and other forms of destruction are increasing.

There have been more incidents of floods in eastern tarai, if not in the entire Gangetic plains. The river bed levels of these rivers have risen adequately due to soil erosion in the Chure hills. Apart from this, there has been sedimentation in the downstream.

Repercussions of such destruction have already seen in forests, wetland and grassland of ecosystem. Population of some wildlife is continuing to dwindle, whereas the endangered and threatened ones are on the brink of extinction.

In the last few decades, Nepal has witnessed fast depletion of its precious forest resources. Consequently, there has been adequate environmental degradation, which has raised public concern.

In reality, forest management can play a meaningful role for forest resource development. However, forest management in Nepal has been influenced by economic, social and political factors, Management systems differ as one moves from west to east and from north to south through different ecological and cultural settings.

Management of forestry and creation of private and village woodlots help to supplement the need of firewood, fodder and timber for the local people apart from maintaining the soil fertility. This will also help protect the national forests.

In fact, the objective of the forest management concept should be to arrest the rapid forest depletion rate in time.

Actually, the long-term development of forest resources will depend on the implementation of the principles of forest management. This is possible only when local user groups are better understood by the forest Department Officials and others, and necessary processes are created to recognise them and formally integrate them into the national management system.

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