The Teen Mauza (literally meaning ‘three villages’) community
forest management (CFM) initiative was started in 2002 by the
villagers of Akhupadar, Basantapur and Lakhapada. They took over
a degraded patch of Reserve Forest, adjoining Akhupadar village.
Although community protection (involving only Akhupadar and
Basantapur) had been attempted in 1998, it had broken down
within two years and then was recommenced in 2002 with the
inclusion of Lakhapada households. The location of these villages
vis-à-vis the community forest and the larger landscape is shown
in Fig. 2. The forest is only five kilometres from Ranpur town,
where the nearest market is situated. Due to the community’s
efforts over the past ten years, the forest has regenerated steadily
from shrubland to a denser forest stage, but regeneration is still
on-going. In physical terms this means that at the moment less
than 5% of the trees are above 50 cm in girth (at breast height); the
total standing stock is around 93 t per hectare7