Forestry in Bhutan - Conservation

Conservation

The small population and the general absence of overdevelopment in Bhutan contributed to forest preservation. Because of the terrain, the more accessible forests had been overcut whereas remote forests remained largely in their natural state. A progressive government-sponsored forestry conservation policy strove to balance revenue needs with ecological considerations, water management, and soil preservation. Success in managing its forest resources had long been critical to the local environment and economy and also affected downstream floodplains in India and Bangladesh.

The Department of Forestry was established in 1952 to oversee conservation and exploitation of the country's significant forestry resources. After an initial decade of development, forestry resource exploitation increased with the start of the First Development Plan in 1961. Uncontrolled felling of trees in the 1970s by private companies in logging areas and by rural populations along roads and in main valleys stripped hillsides and caused serious erosion. Tsheri cultivation, forest fires, and overgrazing also contributed to the degradation of the forestry resource.

In 1971 the Forestry School was established at Kalikhola in southern Bhutan. It was moved to Taba in the northern Thimphu Valley in 1977. The school provided basic instruction in forestry and forest management and trained foresters and Forest Guards.

In 1981 some 33,000 km², or between 70 and 74 percent of the land, were forested, but in 1991 foreign estimates indicated a shrinking forest of only 60 to 64 percent of the land. Even more conservative estimates indicated that closer to 50 percent of Bhutan's territory still was forested in the late 1980s, and about 15 percent of GDP was produced through the nation's important forest industry.

According to UN statistics, in the decade between 1978 and 1987 Bhutan harvested an average of nearly 3.2 million cubic meters of roundwood and produced 5,000 cubic meters of sawn wood per year. Of this total, nearly 80 percent was for commercial use (paper pulp, veneers, plywood, particle board, and firewood), and the remainder was for housing construction and public works.