An article on Biodiversity and Conservation by Krishna P. Acharya of Department of Forest Research and Survey reports on status of farm trees and their role in biodiversity conservation in Nepal.

With a case study of two villages in the Parbat district of Nepal, the paper highlights the role of traditional agroforestry practices for the conservation of tree diversity and argues that farms can be considered biodiversity reservoirs.

Farm trees help to reduce pressure on community and government forests and create a favorable environment for many plant and animal species. Farm trees also provide social functions in that households with many farm trees no longer exercise their communal rights to extract grass products from community forests, which in turn benefits poor and disadvantaged households.

The paper discusses possibilities to improve the role of farm trees in biodiversity conservation. It argues for the development of mechanisms such as tax exemptions and conservation credits that provide benefits to rural communities as compensation for their local and global environmental services including biodiversity conservation.

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Krishna Prasad Acharya, Linking Trees on Farms with Biodiversity Conservation in Subsistence Farming Systems in Nepal, Biodiversity and Conservation, Volume 15, Issue 2, Feb 2006, Pages 631 - 646