Summary:

Since the start of the Australian assistance to forestry activities in Kabhre Palanchok and Sindhu Palchok Districts more than two decades ago, natural and plantation forests have been regenerated and protected by local communities, resulting in large areas of high quality forests. By the 1990s however, it was also apparent that the majority of these forests were being grossly under-utilised. Conservative management, especially with older plantations, was actually having a detrimental effect on forest growth due to overstocking. Better management and utilisation needed to be encouraged so that increased forest products would become available to users and, in many cases, surplus products would become available for sale outside the FUG. Funds generated by improved forest management could then be utilised to drive both participatory social processes and investment in community facilities (including further reforestation). At the same time however, few FUGs possessed the planning skills to utilise their forest resource effectively for fund generation and investment in community development. To address this, a major thrust of NACRMP action research has been to facilitate development planning and forest utilisation by users, recognising that FUG development is an ongoing internal process, occurring independent of external interventions but able to be influenced and directed by such interventions.