Forest Management

The story of a village

An illustrative example of successful community management of natural resources involving a small group of people.

The need for community participation in natural resource management has been widely acknowledged over the last decade. Ongoing research into understanding the concept of participatory management has indicated the involvement of several factors which may be responsible for the success of community based natural resource management. Among these factors, group size and the magnitude of operations are acknowledged as being critical to the success of the resource management system.

The following case study from the south-western part of India is an illustrative example of successful community management of natural resources management system.

The Western Ghat mountain range along the coastline of the state of Karnataka is covered by thick semi-evergreen forests and is a heavy rainfall area. This area is also famous for the area nut or betal nut (Areca catechu) plantations spread along the folds of the Western Ghat range. These plantations are chiefly under the care of a horticulturist community named ‘Havik Brahmin’ who are specialists at harmonizing their horticultural and agricultural activity with the nature around them. The Havik Brahmins are dependent on the forests around them for green leaf manure, firewood for their energy needs and grass for their livestock.

Green leaf manure is obtained by lopping the branches of the trees, firewood from the looped branches after removing the leaves and the grass from the forest undergrowth. To cater to the needs of the community, the Karnataka Forest Department has granted traditional rights to the Havik Brahmin Community whereby forest land is allotted to each plantation in proportion to the plantation size. Approximately 9 acres of forest land is given for 1 acre of plantation. The forest department keeps a regular check on the number of trees and it is the responsibility of the plantation owner to protect the trees.

However, over the last 5 to 10 years, increased urbanization of the nearby towns has created a demand for firewood and many of the horticulturists soon started lopping their trees to sell firewood to the towns. This resulted in an overall degradation of the ‘Betta land’, especially in terms of soil erosion and fodder leaf and grass shortage. There was also no scope for humus formation to enrich the soil.

Under these conditions, the Betta land management at a small village named ‘Ashisar’ is a unique experiment. Ashisar village lies about 10kms. north of the Sirsi town in the North Karnataka district of Karnataka. To suit the terrain and the cultivation practice, the households in the village lie scattered in clusters of 4-5 houses with their plantations adjacent to one another. At Ashisar, a progressive horticulturist has worked wonders with his indigenous design to increase crop production including underground drainage pipes of pottery for the plantation, sprinkler systems to water the trees in the Betta, community bio-gas plants and many others.

This progressive framer has convinced his neighbours to participate in the joint management of their Betta lands. Under this plan, a group of 6 horticulturists whose plantations and Betta lands are adjacent to one another joined hands and enforced certain rules and regulations on themselves. According to their plan, they do selective lopping of the trees in their respective Betta patches, while lopping out only the leaves and not the branches, plant different fast and slow growing tree species of multiple value, take preventing measures to stop soil erosion like staggered contour trenching on the Betta slopes, vegetative and wire fencing around the Betta; reducing the pressure on fuelwood by bio-gas plant installation and other measures to develop their Bettas.

The uniqueness of this joint venture stands out only when this patch of Betta is compared to the other Betta lands in the same area. In other Bettas, each farmer manage his land separately and the result is degraded Bettas which are beyond being salvaged.

The Ashisar village group is a small informal group bound more by interest in scientific methods of Betta development. Since their assets, by right, are private, but the activities are of common importance to all, the management is more through understanding than through formal/informal agreements. The progressive farmer is the acknowledge leader and his viewpoints are accepted by all. The close proximity of the member’s households and the adjacent placement of the plantations and Betta lands has made monitoring and easy task. Usually the youngsters from each family and the hired farm labour attend to all the manual tasks.

There are no conflicts among the participant members. The real problem comes from outside as the other villagers and outsiders leave their cattle in these Bettas by cutting the fences, or steal firewood from the Bettas. The cattle problems are handed over to the village panchayat while the firewood and timber thefts are reported to the Forest Department.

The leader of this system acknowledges that motivation was a major problem. Initially everybody liked the new idea but were scared to implement it. Everybody wanted the leader to experiment in his own Betta and awaited the outcome for 4 years before deciding to join in. Since the horticultural operations in a multi-tier cropping system like the areca nut plantation are delicate, no farmer was willing to risk his income by taking part in the experiment. Everybody felt that whatever be the methods, putting them into practice would be difficult because of the cattle menace. In this area, the cattle population is very high and people tend to leave the cattle for grazing in the Betta forest as stall feeding is a time consuming job. Added to this, the number of stray cattle is very high.

Since the community involved is a Brahmin group, they do not Donation to the idea of electrified fences to control cattle from wandering into the land (for fear of killing a cow). Thus the leader had to physically implement the changes in his own lands, to prove that cattle control is possible, before the others were convinced.


by Dr. Vijay Kumar

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