Community forestry is an evolving branch of forestry whereby the local community plays a significant role in forest management and land use decision making by themselves in the facilitating support of government as well as change agents. It involves the participation and collaboration of various stakeholders including community, government and non-government organizations (Wikipedia).
      Talking about its history, forest has been always an important part of human's life. In ancient period it was not only used for food, medicine, cloths but also for shelter, education, punishment and salvation. People have used forest through different ways in different ages. In Nepal forest covers 39.6 %( GON 1999) of the total land and majority (80%) of livelihood depends on forest and agriculture. Slowly along with its use forest management trend also started. The Department of Forests, was established as a state agency in 1942 to manage the forest resources of Nepal (HMG, 1976).Though different efforts were made for forest management from earlier period, legally it came in practice in 1957 after Private Forest nationalization Act 1957 was enforced. But it couldn?t be successful. Due to population pressure and government's inability to fulfill people's requirements, there was high exploitation of forest resources. This made the government to realize the importance of people's participation in effective management of the forest as keeping them away from it had done more bad than good. Hence concept of community forestry emerged in 1978.And it was initiated from Sindhupalchowk district of Nepal. Later in 1993 government formulated Forest Act 1993 under which forest were categorized as:-

1)      National Forest
1)Community forest

2) Leasehold Forest
3) Government managed Forest
4) Religious forest
5) protected forest    

2)      Private Forest

Also Forest Regulations (1995), the Operational Guidelines (1995), Revised Operational Guidelines (2001-02), and the Forestry Sector Policy (2000) have further institutionalized community forestry in Nepal. Community forest is run by the "community forest user groups (CFUG's)". The acts, regulations and guidelines define CFUG as an independent, autonomous and self-governing institution responsible to protect, manage and use any patch of national forest with a defined forest boundary and user group members. CFUGs are to be formed democratically and registered at the District Forest Office (DFO), with CFUG Constitution, which defines the rights of the users to a particular forest. The forest is handed over to the community once the respective members through a number of consultative meetings and processes prepares the Operational Plan (OP), a forest working plan, and submits it to the District Forest Officer (DFO) for approval. The plan has to be countersigned by the Chairperson of the CFUG. The general assembly of the CFUG is the supreme body to finalize the plan before it is submitted to the DFO for its approval. The plan is generally implemented by an executive committee nominated by the general assembly.

     About 850,000 hectares forest areas have been handed over to eleven thousands forest user groups involving over a million households(Bhatta 2001).Community forest has been a great success in nepal specially in midhills resulting in livelihood improvement,conversion of natural capital into financial capital, leadership development, inclusion etc.
   Above were some information on community forest in Nepal .I had got chance to interact with one of the  CFUG group of Basaha ,Dhading named Gaurikhola Community Forest which was led by women.
  The programme was "Interaction programme on Sustainable forest management "supported by National conservation and development centre (NCDC).And the main objective was to interact on the topics as follows:-

 1) Climate Change
2) Forest Fire Prevention
3) Sustainable Forest management
4) Women empowerment in Forest management

 The above topics are the talk of the world and most of the world knows about it well. But the people from remote areas have hardly some knowledge about these topics excluding some who have got opportunity to participate related trainings. At first we gave them brief information about the above topics and later discussion was held. The women's were curious and some had good knowledge about the above topics. According to them at the early stage of CFUG establishment they were objected by their community but now they were independent and had been able to manage their forest well. This community forest had changed their lives in case of their needs fulfillment as well as themselves (leadership).They was happy about how those barren lands have been developed into a beautiful forest. Not only that the income generated through their CF had helped them to establish their own nursery, hire a caretaker (ban heralo) of forest. Also they could use the fund as loan whenever they need.

   In Nepal there are many other women led community aforests, hope they will also be able to make good use of their resources and be able to uplift their living standard as well as boost the status of country's greenery.