Aamdanda village in Tanahun district, has been known for having landslide incidents, but all of that changed thanks to fodder trees and broom grass! Yes...broom grass!

The locals call it amriso. Broom grass got its name because the locals created sweeping brooms out of their large flower heads. Broom grass has a very strong root binding system, thus, stabilising the hillsides. It has other variable purposes, such as providing livestock (fodder), burning stalks as feul and using broom grass as mulch to protect the soil.

Previously, the indigenous communities used to subsist through shifting cultivation from one area to the next, clearing and burning extensive areas of forest to cultivate. This practice led to deforestation, soil erosion, increasing silt on rivers (sediment deposited on flatter plains downstream, therefore worsening floods and sometimes changing river course) and landslides.

Now, broom gas's is transforming the steep, degraded slopes above the Trishuli and Seti rivers. Thanks to a lease hold agreement with the government, where by the communities agree on sound maintainance practices such as planting trees and - of course - growing broom grass. This initiative has not only made a living for the local communities, who sell the broom grass to the market, but locals witnessed first hand and testified that the streams and water supplies which previously used to be red of sediment, is now clear flowing.