Bio-diversity

Dhangbang VDC of Salyan district consists of 22 community forestry (CF) covering 1,866 hectares of land having users of 1,771 households. These community forests are rich in non-timber forest products but lack of forest certificaiton, these NTFP and the essential oil could not find any market. On the other hand, trading of raw form of cinnamomum glaucucescence is banned by Nepalese law. 11 of these CFs only have Xanthoxylum plants, 3 have only cinnamomum, 4 of the CF include both the plants, and 4 have neither. While the project, specifically targets all 22 CFUGs from the VDC, the Tarepahar Community Forest is selected to serve as a model. The project targets to certify these forest and promote marketing of NTFP thereby increasing the livelihood and income of the participating community forests. The project also expects its benefits to have a trickledown effect on CFs outside of Dhanabang VDC and profit the entire district at large. The project aims to achieve, among others, better management of CFs in the region leading to environment friendly practices, and establishment of sales channels for increased economic independence of CFUGs through harvesting of local plants abundantly available in the region.

Nepal