1. Introduction : about 83 percent of forest area in the Kandi tract belongs to the local communities and private individuals. The forest department exercises control over these forest areas under the land preservation act, 1990. This area constitutes about 52 percent of the total forest areas in the state. The forest department has been implementing various afforestation and soil conservation schemes to check forest degradation and rehabilitate degraded lands. The entire income from these areas by way of sale of timber, fulewood and non-timber forest products goes to the owners and the state government does not receive any part of such revenue. However, these schemes though quite useful have not been able to bring about the expected level of development. Therefore in order to hasten pace of development the question of involving village communities for effective protection and conservation of forests has been under the active consideration of the government for some time past.

2. The Sukho Majri model and the experience of the government in the Kandi tract of Punjab have shown that a major reason for soil erosion and land degradation is non-sustainable exploitation of the forest resource by impoverished villagers due to their over-riding subsistence requirements. As such purely technical afforestation and soil conservation measures cannot be expected to bring desired results. The forest department and village communities / individuals can be partners in developing sustainable natural resources management provided it is in the economic interest of the owners to do so.

3. Joint Forest Management

After careful appraisal, the government is of the view that the rural community should be fully and actively involved in forest protection and conservation. Accordingly , it has been decided that the following schemes involving the rural community will be implemented in the state.

3.1 Under this scheme, villagers will be assigned a specific role in the protection of government forests adjoining their village and community/private forests of the village itself. In return the local people would be allowed to collect dry/fallen twigs and leaves, wild fruits, medicinal herbs etc. from the government forests free of cost. They would also be entitled to get fodder grasses (but not bhabber grass) from the government forests free of cost where such grasses are not auctioned and the villagers have been conventionally obtaining grass from the forests.

3.2 The local people shall be allowed to obtain fodder grass at comparatively cheaper rates through limited auctions i.e. auctions which shall be confined to the residents of the assigned village.

3.3 The concerned divisional forest officer shall assign government forests to the adjoining villagers according to the compartment line or where the compartment line does not exist natural features like nala, bridge/inspection paths, bridges etc. will from the demarcation point. However, forest area notified under section 18(I) of the wild life protection act, 1972 will be excluded from the purview of the assignment.

3.4 Forest Protection Committee

The concerned DFO shall constitute a forest protection committee for each of the assigned villages. The committee shall comprise Sarpanch of the level worker and such other persons of the said village not exceeding three as may be selected by convening a meeting of the concerned villagers. These three members of the committee shall include at least one person belonging to the scheduled castes, one woman and one ex-serviceman. If an ex-serviceman is not available hen any retired or serving government employee, preferably a school teacher may be included. The Sarpanch of the Gram Panchayat and the local forest guard shall be chairman and convenor of the committee respectively. The villagers shall through the protection committee furnish an undertaking to the concerned DFO for proper upkeep and maintenance of the assigned government forest area. The assigned village shall be responsible for fire protection and prevention of illicit felling, theft of forest produce and encroachments in the assigned government forest area. The forest protection committee shall be responsible for ensuring performance of the above functions by villagers of the assigned villages.

3.5 Planning and Development of Forests

The committee shall assist the range officer concerned in the planning and execution of afforestation and soil conservation schemes. The schemes shall contain complete details of the site, beneficiaries, activities to be undertaken, estimated cost and benefits, and details of working arrangement, mechanism for sharing the produce and related matters.

Choice of species will be left to the committee but their sustainability to the edapho-climatic conditions will be ascertained by the forest department. While emphasis may be given to short duration plantation crops to ensure earlier returns long-duration plantations should be given due consideration in the interest of ecology and long term sustainability. In order to ensure conservation of bio-diversity due consideration shall also be given to the requirement of indigenous fauna.

3.6 Distribution of Benefit

For performance of the duties enumerated in the preceding paras, the villagers shall be entitled to obtain their bona fied requirements for dry/fallen twigs and leaves, wild fruits, medicinal herbs, etc. from the forest for household consumption and not for sale or barter. The forest protection committee shall be responsible for proper distribution of forest produce among the households, keeping in view their minimum requirements and on the basis of available produce before meeting their demands for other purposes.

Forest produce shall be removed from the assigned government forest areas only in accordance with existing rules with specific recommendation of the committee.