- Ram Prasad Acharya

Bhitteri Pakha Community Forest User Group (FUG) , Dolakha district, central Nepal (Boch VDC 1, 2, and 3) was formed in 1993. The community long protected this community forest as panchayat forest. Prior to promulgation of Forest Act 1993, a small patch of 16 hectares of plantation area was handed over to the FUG in this year.

In the beginning, the experience of Dolakha District Forest Office (DFO) in facilitating community forestry was limited and staff were a bit hesitant to hand over forest to local community as a community forest. Both DFO staff and FUG gained confidence in managing the forest as soon as it was handed over. As the area was too small to fulfil the forest product requirements of the community, and with the realization of commercial use of some of the species found in the locality, the forest area was expanded to include additional patches of 329 hectares of natural forests in 1997 to cover 345 hectares.

With the initiation of enterprise oriented resource conservation activities in Dolakha in 1998, feasibility team from ANSAB identified Boch FUG as potential beneficiary of these activities. The community was selected on the basis of abundant resource availability, community interests on resource management and enterprises, potentiality for income to women and low-income groups, and easily and locally available technology for simple value addition for some of the most promising NTFPs. The team even identified these communities to be already involved in some form of income generating activities on their own. Several discussions and interactions with community people revealed that they had an interest to scale up their enterprises to include new and promising products such as Argeli white-skin.

In 2000, the community showed interest to include additional products of commercial value as their interest in scaling up their enterprise. They even added a provision to establish Argeli white-skin enterprise in their forest operational plan. Despite their strong interest and availability of adequate resources, they have

not been able to establish the proposed enterprise because of lack of sufficient capital as well as fixed investment for installing white skin processing units. However, financial and technical support from ANSAB enabled these FUG to install processing units and initiate enterprise activities. A total of 40% of the needed capital contributed by ANSAB while 60% was invested by the FUG itself from their common funds. In 2000, the enterprise prepared 450 kg of white-skin , which had been sold to Kanpou Nepal. It increased to 670 kg in the year 2001. Apart from this, it plans to start Lokta paper enterprise in collaboration with two adjacent community forest user groups.

The FUG prepared a community forest operational plan so as to cover whole of 345 hectares with assistance of DFO and Nepal Swiss Community Forestry Project. As soon as the new operational plan was approved, FUG started showing initiation in protection and utilization of forest resources (i.e. fuel-wood, fodder, and timber) for this added area as well. Argeli was assessed with the help of ANSAB and DFO in March 2000. As an output to participatory resource mapping with the local villagers, the FUG members could succeed in tracing Argeli available area in the map of community forest as well as locating dense, medium and sparse habitation of Argeli. The available area was calculated using dot grid method. With the participatory inventory and data analysis, it was concluded that 45-kg of Argeli having 7 to 11 cm diameters was available in the Bhitteri Pakha community forest per year.

Similarly in August 2000, after surveying some area, all forest products were inventoried using the stratified systematic sampling with 1% sampling intensity. A participatory mapping was done in scaled-map and the area was divided according to the forest stand type, natural boundary and public access in 10 blocks as well as 26 forest stand types according to forest species, density, and age. The inventory covered all major tree and shrub species. Among them, major commercial products i.e. Lokta, Allo, Dhasingare, Musli, and Chiraito were observed. The plot was distributed with area proportionate method. The tree species was observed in 20x25 meter square for premature and matured tree. Other pole, sapling and shrub were observed in 10x10 meter square. The regeneration and herb were measured in 2x2 meter square. The participatory resource inventory revealed that about 750 kg of green Argeli could be annually harvested in sustainable manner.

With the establishment of an enterprise, Argeli was found insufficient for enterprise purposes. The community has started managing Argeli in the natural condition. They even prepared a special provision for its management plan in OP. According to that Argeli should only be harvested after it reaches in 7 cm in girth, attaining the height of 1.5 m.

Apart from managing the forest area, community started planting the seedling of Argeli in private and community forest area. They could succeed in planting 35000 (20,000 in CF area and 15000 in private land) seedlings in 2000.

Except the conservation impacts, the enterprise provided community with economic beneits by proving employment opportunities as well. Besides,it plans to have integration conservation and income generation activities for future.