Nepal’s Community Forestry (CF) programme is considered successful in halting deforestation and forest degradation, increasing forest cover, restoring degraded hill slopes, and bringing socio-economic benefits to rural people. Currently, more than 22,000 Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) manage over 2 million hectares (ha) of forests across the country. Despite these achievements, regulatory instruments, management plans, and institutional practices focus narrowly on a few timber species. Consequently, CF management is heavily skewed towards extractive use, and the value of biodiversity and ecosystem services are largely ignored. There is a lack of concrete effort to mainstream biodiversity in CFs.

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