Illegal logging is having a devastating impact on the world's forests. Its effects include forest degradation, deforestation, the loss of biodiversity and fuelling climate change. Ancient forests have evolved over thousands of years into unique and vital habitats for millions of plant and animal species. They are also home to millions of people who depend on them for their livelihoods and survival. It is estimated that some 1.6 billion people worldwide depend on forests for their livelihood and 60 million indigenous peoples depend on forests for their subsistence.

Current data shows that annual rate of deforestation in Nepal is 1.3 percent. This indicates the change in forest cover only. Lots of trees are felled illegally from the forest. There is no more study data on that how many trees have been felled and how much wood volume is lost by illegal logging in Nepal. Over 8% of the high-value Terai southern plains forests are being lost each year due to illegal cutting and forest clearance (Dinesh et al 2006). Small farmers to high level organized groups are involved in this activity. Illegal logging undermines the trade in legal and well-managed timber by responsible companies by under cutting its price and making it less competitive. Money from Illegal logging is used for funding crime and distorting markets.

Nature of felling

1. Purely criminal activity; Logging without official permission called timber theft, where felling carried out by local resident or some organized group for sale. Mostly cycle is used for transfer of wood in many cases and four wheel vehicles are also used in some case. Now in days motorcycle is increasingly used. This is most typical for logging of large-sized especially valuable wood. This type of felling is generally done in night time. High price of wood and its continuous increment leads attraction of jobless youth people towards this activity. Due to high price there is more income without any investment, most of the crime minded people attracted towards this business. These people are fulfilled with high technical weapons. Instead the current forest people unable to fight with them, because forest people do not have high technique weapons as well as that type of trainings.
2. Felling caused by unauthorized construction; at present, timber is often felled to clear areas for the construction of infrastructure facilities (buildings, hospitals, schools, transmission line, road etc.), without issuing required permits, or with no authorization whatsoever. In most case felling has been done in the name of squatters settlement lead by local social and political workers. In the majority of cases, the culprits are not penalized. Such practices are common across the nation.
3. Felling carried out by local resident for personal need like fuel wood, timber; this violation occurs because small village residents in many regions are too poor to buy even the smallest amount of timber and firewood they need. There is a relatively large group of people unwilling to pay the State for the 'people's' resources. People do not get the timber easily even they want to buy. The inefficiency of state controlled channels fosters the development of such attitudes.
4. Felling carried out by local resident for extension of agricultural land for food adjacent to their land area. This is common in nationwide where the agricultural land join the forest area.
5. Abuse of authorized forest felling; wrong selection of felling tree, over logging by volume and miss-measurement of logs due to inadequate technical knowledge.

Underlying causes

1. Week law enforcement
2. Political Will: The political will to cope with illegal logging represent an expression to equally prefer the welfare of future generations as that of present generation. Illegal logging benefits the welfare of present generation at the cost of future generations (Bouriaud and Niskanen, 2003). Forests need to become a universal political priority (UNEP, 2011).
3. High value of land; First land criminals use landless people to clear the forest land and then they capture it.
4. Unbalance demand and supply of forest products; The annual per capita fuel-wood consumption in the hills is about 640 kg whereas it is 479 kg per person per year in the Terai. The per capita timber consumption was estimated at 0.07 m³ per year in 1985 and was found to have increased to 0.11 m³ per year by 2000. Based on this, national timber demand is estimated to be about 2.5 million m³ per year. Forest office cannot supply the forest products especially timber according to demand of growing people. It such cases it is easiest to go to the nearest forest and cut the necessary amount of timber. The foresters will hardly find out, and the neighbors will not tell anyone, because they themselves are doing the same thing.
5. Energy supply; 77% of households in Nepal still depend on solid fuel for cooking and heating with the largest percentage of this group using wood form gathered from forests and private land. There is no effective supply mechanism of fire wood which is the main energy source of Nepalese people. It is essential to focus on the supply of fire wood like to petroleum product. As we know, government give subsidies to supply petroleum but there is even no easy mechanism to supply fire wood for those people who are far from forests. Only the role of district forest product supply committee is not sufficient to supply the firewood in the southern terai area.
6. Low technical knowledge of community forest users and outdated forest officials; issuing permits without real assessment of the volume of wood allocated on stump, or with gross errors in the calculation of volume.
7. Traditional forest management plan and week implementation.
8. Week co-ordination among government organization; Different sectors of government itself support, service activities (water supply, school, electricity, telephone etc.) on encroached land although that is prohibited by forest law.
9. Attitude of community forest users; why should we consult forest office, they already handed over the forest to us.
10. Attitude of people; they think that felling of tree is not crime.
11. Verification system; There is no any specific legality verification system of swan timber on the saw mills as well as on the market. The increase in demand for timber products, regardless of their legality, is fuelling forest destruction.

Illegal logging may results to severe ecological consequences. Illegal logging directly leads to forest degradation, where Degradation refers to the loss of quality of the forests, rather than coverage. Besides the diminishing stand timber quality (often, illegal logging represent the harvest of the most valuable trees of the stand), and the location (illegal logging affect often protected forests and forest reserves), the stability of the stands may also be negatively affected. The ultimate effect will be decrease in ground table and decrease in fresh water availability.

There is a surplus fuel wood and timber in high altitudes area. Even in Terai there are many dead, fallen small sized fuel wood left behind. Peoples who are near forest and CF users generally use selected trees for timber and fire wood. There is no fire wood even for cooking in that area far from forest especially southern Terai. The wood residues that are left behind become fuel for forest fire in dry season. Energy supply mechanism should focus on rural people and distant users who are using fire wood as their energy source. Collection and use of dead and fallen wood should be encouraged. Strong political will is necessary; people always hear the voice of political leader rather than conservationist. Promoting responsible consumption and production of forest-related goods is essential.

References

• Bouriaud and Niskanen, 2003: Seminar on STRATEGIES FOR THE SOUND USE OF WOOD, Illegal logging in the context of the sound use of wood, Poiana rasov, Romania 24-27 March 2003. http://www.unece.org/timber/docs/sem-1/papers/r30Niskanen.pdf
• Singh B K and Smith P, 2009: An Assessment of Climate Change Forests and Biodiversity in Nepal, USAID/Nepal
• Paudel D, Keeling S J and Khanal D R, 2006: Forest products verification in Nepal and the work of the Commission to Investigate the Abuse of Authority, VERIFOR country case study No 10. http://www.verifor.org/
• http://www.unep.org
• NFA 2007: Democratization, governance and sustainable development of the forestry sector of Nepal, Proceeding of the national workshop, Kathmandu.