CONSERVATION PRACTICES AT AN UPPER-ELEVATION VILLAGE OF WEST NEPAL

Of the 17 035 dry weight kg of forest products collected by the average household each year, 32.8% is fuelwood for herders, 23.8% is livestock fodder, and 19.2% is fuel for houses. Shortages of forest products have relatively recently begun to affect Chimkhola, and villagers have established a series of regulations designed to conserve forests and needed forest products. These measures, however, seem inadequate to halt the forest degradation process. Unless villagers ensure forest regeneration by managing livestock grazing and browsing, a change that seems unlikely, the current communally controlled agro-silvo-pastoral system will probably dissolve into one of individual action, with increasingly intensive agricultural production on fewer, more spatially concentrated holdings and with fewer livestock which are kept close to the house and fed fodder from private trees. -from Author