Status of forest coverage in Nepal

The last National Forest Inventory (NFI) was carried out in the early nineties in Nepal. According to that inventory, forest and shrub together cover about 5.83 million ha, which is 39.6% of the total land area of the country. The rate of forest area decrease was 1.7% per annum during 1978/79 to 1994, whereas the rate of forest and shrub depletion was 0.5% per annum during the same period. Since then an NFI has not been done to update data on forest cover change. However, the recent studies from 20 Terai districts revealed that the rate of forest cover change was at an annual rate of 0.06% during 1990/91 to 2000/2001. Macro level studies and visual interpretations revealed that Nepal’s forest coverage and condition is significantly improving due to the Community Forestry (CF) intervention.[Source: http://www.fao.org/docrep/014/am250e/am2… ]