Managing Biodiversity: Impacts of Legal Protection in Mountain Forests of the Himalayas

Abstract

Legal protection has been used as means of conserving forests and associated biodiversity in many regions of the world since the eighteenth century. However, most forests in the global south, even those within protected areas, are influenced by human activities. Himalayan forests harbour much of the biodiversity of the region, maintain subsistence livelihoods, and provide regional and global ecosystem services like water regulation, flood control, and carbon sequestration. Yet few studies have quantitatively studied the impacts of legal protection on forest health and biodiversity. We assess woody biodiversity and forest health in relation to legal protection and biomass extraction in forests inside and outside Langtang National Park in Nepal (n = 180). We found more woody species in protected forests. Of the 69 woody species recorded, 47% occurred at both sites. Within protected forests, we found differences in forest health largely related to the intensity of biomass extraction expressed as walking distance to settlement. The closer the forest was to settlements, the heavier degradation it suffered, showing that within agro-forestry systems in the Himalayas, the resource-consumer distance is typically determining the intensity of biomass extraction. Our research brings forth the need to better address the drivers of resource extraction from protected areas in order to mitigate this degradation. It also brings forth the need to contribute to the development of appropriate participatory management programmes outside areas of formal protection in order to sustain both biodiversity and ecosystem service delivery from these forests for the future.

Impacts of community forestry on forest condition: Evidence from Sri Lanka’s intermediate zone

“…We incorporate these parameters into the model to identify impacts of the CF program on forest condition. Moreover, several studies that applied indicators of human disturbances to measure the condition of the forest are considered [34,73,74].…”

“…The plant diversity and composition-based indicators were retained as most valuable [71,72]. The reference column in Table 2 notes several scientific studies that have applied similar human disturbance-based indicators to measure forest condition [34,73,74].…”

Population structure and regeneration of Himalayan endemic Larix species in three high-altitude valleys in Nepal Himalaya

“…High-altitude forests, especially subalpine forests, in the Himalaya are prone to anthropogenic disturbances due to severe climatic conditions and high-altitude residence of local people (Miehe and Miehe 2000;Gairola et al 2014). The common anthropogenic disturbances in these forests include grazing, fuel wood collection, logging, clear felling, extraction of timber, fodder and other non-timber forest products by the local people (Byers 1996;Carpenter and Zomer 1996;Byers 1997;Kala et al 2002;Schickhoff 2005;Maren and Sharma 2018). Forests have traditionally been exploited in the study sites in multiple ways to maximize economic and social benefits.…”

“…Forests have traditionally been exploited in the study sites in multiple ways to maximize economic and social benefits. Recently, the socioeconomic organization in the highaltitude areas and public attitudes towards the forest and forestry have changed dramatically with the growth of tourism and other recreational activities (Nepal 2002;Stevens 2003;Sacareau 2009;Neupane et al 2014;Mu et al 2019), and the goals of forest management now extend far beyond those of the past to embrace the demand for new ecological and recreational functions (Maren and Sharma 2018;Bhutiya et al 2019).…”

Planning for Democracy in Protected Rural Areas: Application of a Voting Method in a Spanish-Portuguese Reserve

“…Institutional stakeholders have not got an associative reference to generate a strong local relationship network, given that some of these stakeholders are in the area as the consequence of the implementation of rural development policies. In the academic literature it is possible to find several examples of research on decision-making applied to the use of resources in natural spaces [8][9][10][11].…”