July 23, 2024
THIMPHU – On June 20, 2024, Kuensel reported a news story headlined ‘Wildlife Crime on the Rise’, followed by another on July 20, 2024, titled ‘Combating Tiger and Wildlife Crime’. A forestry official speaking to Kuensel noted that wildlife crime yields enormous profits for criminal networks, ranking alongside trafficking in drugs, arms, and humans.
According to the statistics maintained by the Department of Forests and Park Services, there were 7,799 forest offense cases reported over the past five years (2018–2022). Timber offenses were the most common, accounting for 53 percent of the cases, followed by non-wood forest products at 21.5 percent, and fishing at 20 percent. Wildlife poaching was a mere 2.2 percent. During this period, total fines collected amounted to Nu 366 million, which is over six times higher than the corporate income tax (CIT) collected from the NRDCL, the government entity with a monopoly on timber, sand, and stone harvesting and sales. This high level of enforcement can be attributed to motivated eco-guards and attractive financial rewards for informants, who received an average of Nu 6 million annually.
Is peaceful Bhutan a hotbed for international wildlife crime?
The Kuensel headlines imply that Bhutan is a hotbed for international wildlife crime. However, wildlife poaching constituted only 2.2 percent of the total forest offenses, with about 75 percent of the cases related to trees and plants. The headlines are misleading as wildlife generally refers to wild animals, and wildlife crime typically means the killing of animals for trade. Nonetheless, as evidenced by the numbers, forest offenses related to trees and plants are common.
The root of the issue lies in Bhutan’s forest laws. The first forest law in 1969, rooted in British colonialism and imported from India, nationalised all forests, extinguishing customary rights and tightly regulating people’s access to them. When this law was revised in 1995, it added an additional layer by designating large portions of forests as protected areas, influenced by the wilderness ideology from the US, which propagated a hands-off approach to nature.
How permit raj, rationing and sanctions push farmers towards criminalisation
Just over half a century ago, Bhutan was wholly an agrarian society where farmers cultivated crops and raised livestock. They freely took from the forest what they needed, such as timber for house construction, energy for cooking, wild fruits, vegetables, medicinal plants, and raw materials for their village arts and crafts. Forests were considered common property, and there was no concept of state-reserved forest land. Farmers also periodically set fire to land to maintain open forestlands for cattle grazing and manage undergrowth.
However, the 1969 Forest Act introduced state ownership of all lands outside privately registered lands. Village commons became state land. The law defined “forest produce” to include all life and non-life forms above and below forest lands, which then belonged to the state. To tighten control, the state granted extensive powers to forest officers, including the authority to inspect, fine, charge, arrest, and detain those accused of forest offenses.
Farmers were no longer able to freely access, use, move, or trade forest produce without a government permit. Permits, granted after extensive paperwork and vetting, rationed forest produce—such as allowing 4,000 cft of timber for new house construction once every 25 years, strictly for approved purposes. In a subsistence society heavily reliant on their natural surroundings, these forest regulations confine farmers and often compel them to violate these rules.
Basis for forest rules: Bureaucratic power, not science or environmental concerns
Colonialism’s primary aim was to increase wealth and power by exploiting natural resources in their colonies. Upon occupying a territory, the British swiftly claimed ownership of the province’s forests and implemented forest rules that barred local people from tree felling while imposing duties on timber and other forest produce with economic value. Discussions on respecting indigenous peoples’ traditional rights were often dismissed with the assertion that The Right of Conquest is the strongest of all rights. It is a right against which there is no appeal. An early British Administrator roared that …not a single tree ought to be touched, not a stick of valuable wood allowed to be carried away for any purpose but those of the Government without express sanctions, and to declare all such forests in our territories the property of the Company…
The Colonial Administration established a forest department with the expressed aim of ensuring the sustained supply of timber required to meet the empire’s growing demand for navy, army, railways, public works and revenue generation. This department prioritised trees for the Empire over the needs of the local people. Forest rules served colonial interests by dominating the people, rather than for scientific or environmental reasons. A forest guard and informant reward system ensured no tree was felled without colonial permission, and all timber and forest produce movement was subject to detention for inquiry. Bhutan’s 1969 Forest Act was based on this anti-people template.
If the 1969 Forest Act was anti-people, the new Act that replaced it in 1995 ushered in an anti-development sentiment. The 1995 forest law heavily incorporated the American concept of National Parks as a forest conservation strategy, resulting in over half of Bhutan’s land being declared protected areas. This shift was influenced by the WWF, which established a base in Bhutan in the 1980s. In the US, where this concept originated, National Parks have a dark history of violence and injustice for local people, a pattern replicated in many other countries. This approach is rooted in a Western perspective that views nature as pristine wilderness, untouched by human activity and free from infrastructure development.
Colonialism may be history, but it left entrenched bureaucracies behind. In India, after gaining independence in 1947, the forest bureaucracy preserved colonial forestry structures. Bhutan, though never colonized, adopted the forest law from India. Bureaucracies often resist change, and colonial forestry continued to control the narrative and justified its existence through propaganda, claiming that local people’s activities harmed forests and needed regulation. Thus, forest rules primarily served to control people under the guise of national interest and environmental conservation. It is unfortunate that in the 21st century, Bhutan’s forest bureaucracy still reflects this colonial mindset, as evidenced by the new forest law passed in 2023, which stands as a forest law gone rogue in Bhutan—anti-people and anti-development.
The state of forest cover today
Since 2011, the Department has consistently reported lower forest cover figures, leading the Bhutanese public to mistakenly believe that forest cover has declined. In reality, forest cover has increased significantly. The Department reported a decrease in forest cover from 72.5 percent in 1995 to 70.5 percent in 2011, omitting the fact that, using their previous definition which included both Tree Cover and Shrub, forest cover actually increased to 80.95 percent. This impressive conservation success seemed problematic for the Department, which historically thrived on a narrative of deforestation crisis. Consequently, they redefined forests to exclude Shrub, which constituted 10.5 percent of the country’s territory and contained 58 million m³ of timber. By 2016, forest cover had risen further to 83.9 percent. The inconsistent forest cover reporting has significant national policy and management implications. The current forest definition adopted by the Department is inadequate and problematic and must be updated.
The FAO definition of a forest, partially adopted by the Department, is biased towards trees. The Constitution does not specify what constitutes a forest but emphasizes biodiversity protection and ecosystem integrity. Therefore, a broader definition is warranted. Currently, our forest definition excludes the land cover class Meadow, which covers 2.5 percent of the country and serves as vital habitats for herders, yaks, snow leopards, blue sheep, and medicinal plants. This exclusion is inconsistent with the Constitution’s intent and should be rectified. Including meadows in the forest definition would raise the forest cover to 86.41 percent.
The increase in forest cover occurred at the expense of agricultural land, which decreased from 7.7 percent to 2.5 percent, and meadows, which fell from 3.9 percent to 2.5 percent between 1995 and 2016.
The real crisis in
Bhutan’s forests
For years, the lack of comprehensive and reliable data on forest extent, composition, health, and growth rates was identified as the major bottleneck in formulating evidence-based policies and making informed decisions about forest management and conservation. Today, we have this data in the form of the National Forest Inventory reports.
According to the NFI 2023, over 93 percent of the country’s forests are classified as moderately dense to very dense. We see dense forests all around us and consider them the panacea for environmental conservation. But wait a minute. Scores of new research now say that dense forests with crowded trees are stressed ecosystems, vulnerable to pests, diseases, biodiversity loss, water guzzling, and ideal conditions for catastrophic megafires.
The NFI measured the total timber reserve in the country at 1,001 million m³, nearly double the 529 million m³ recorded in 1981, indicating an annual forest growth of 13.5 million m³. However, due to our forest preservation policy and our efforts to please an outside audience, the total wood removed from the forests annually has never exceeded 0.5 million m³, amounting to less than 4 percent of the annual growth. The consequence of these actions is that a poor country, despite being endowed with rich forest resources, is reduced to being a net importer of wood, with imports outstripping exports sevenfold. The forestry sector’s share of GDP is less than 3 percent. Most sadly, the farmers who are the soul of the country and for whom the forest is managed by the state are criminalised for their dependence on forest resources. This is the irony of all ironies.
The real crisis in Bhutan’s forests today lies in the persistence of a colonized mindset. Despite the expansive and overstocked forest cover, the prevailing narrative of deforestation and damage caused by people continues to dominate forest management. This has led to policies and practices that are fundamentally misaligned with current ecological, economic, and social realities, and are out of sync with the best international sustainable forest principles.
While Bhutan’s past forest protection measures have preserved vast areas, it is now essential to adopt a dynamic, people-centric, and proactive approach to sustainable forest management. A decolonised mindset is crucial for unlocking the full potential of our forests to foster sustainable and inclusive GDP growth, alleviate poverty among farmers, conserve biodiversity, and enhance forest resilience against climate change. It is time to stop fooling ourselves with a superficial and misplaced conservation agenda and the need to please an outside audience.