A community forest is defined as a forest handed over to the community forest user groups for protection, conservation, development, management, and utilization of the community forest resources for the common benefit.
Most of the CF in Nepal are managed traditionally in the past. CF operational plan includes all the forest managing rules, regulations, and silvicultural treatment to be applied which is approved by DFO.
The silvicultural operations applied in the CF of Nepal are limited only to pruning, thinning, Tree stands improvement and felling. Very less research has been done on the identification of appropriate silviculture systems to be applied in the diverse forest types of Nepal.
In some CF, The CFUGs are using a selection system to manage the forest for many years. In this system, only selective trees are felled resembling dead, dying, diseased, and badly deformed trees.
Almost all CF are protection oriented rather than production. The government of Nepal has introduced a Scientific forest management system in 2015. SFM is also called Silvicultural system-based Forest management. SFM system is aimed at managing forests in a productive way incorporating all the pillars of sustainability.
Some pilot projects of SFM were well implemented in the CF and collaborative forest of Terai and the hilly region. The irregular Shelterwood system was considered the most favorable. But later various government issues and technical imprecision were detected. Despite the numerous advantage of this approach, SFM was abandoned in Nepal on 24 January 2021 due to its inconvenience.
Hence we can say that the application of advanced silviculture in the CF of Nepal is growing very slow. This has limited the potentiality of CF for the economic development of the country. Effective management and optimum utilization of forest resources are only possible with an Appropriate Silviculture system.
Hello, I am Shraban Kumar Basnet from Chitwan. I am a young forester. I have been working in the forest sector for the past 8 years, directly involved in the pre-preparation of forest management plans. Nowadays I am also working in the preparation of a forest operational plan in Bagmati province, I am directly involved at CF level and earlier I work in the shelterwood system in scientific forest management and now I work in selection system base forest management in Bagmati province but I think some curiosity while formulating operational plan here How to organize the forest management plan at the community level, which includes not only social factors and environmental factors and economic factors but also needs to be written and monitored for its actual implementation. In the case of social factors, it plays a key role in implementation.