Legal classification

Forests in state ownership in the Northern Areas have been designated as “protected forests” under the Pakistan Forest Act (1927). The other legal category of forests here is “private forest” which are owned by the local communities. These forests are legally covered under the Gilgit Private Forests Regulations (1970) and the Rules framed under the regulation.

Protected Forests: Act 1976 e.

Protected forests are either the property of the government or the government has propriety rights or is entitled to the whole or part of the forest produce (Ali, 2004). However local people may have some concessions and user rights. They may be able to use these forests for grazing and collection of fuel wood and other non-timber products. These forests are found in Gilgit, Baltistan and Astore areas and are regulated under the Northern Areas Forest Rules 1983. The total area under protected forests in Northern Areas is 64,512 ha. The dominant species found here are spruce, silver fir and blue pine (Ali, 2004). Total shrub cover is 381,200 ha but further classification into private or protected forests is not found.

Table 1. Protected Forests in Northern Areas

Source: Rao, A. L. and A. H. Marwat. 2003. NASSD Background Paper: Forestry. IUCN Pakistan, Northern Areas Program, Gilgit.

Private Forests:
Private forests are owned by the people and regulated under the Gilgit Private Forests Regulations, 1970 and the rules notified in 1975. In accordance with the Accession Deed of 1952 with the government of Pakistan the tribal communities of Chilas, Darel and Tangir in Diamer district own the private forests of the Northern Areas. But these are managed by the Northern Areas Forest Department (NAFD) as agreed by the local communities in the Deed.

NAFD has been helping the communities in commercial harvesting of private forests by preparing working schemes, marking of trees for felling and issuing permits for transportation of timber to outside markets.

These forests have commercial value and therefore a working scheme is prepared every 10 years for commercial exploitation. Locals have a 100% ownership and the government gets 50% royalties from the revenue and Rs. 1 per cubit ft of timber sold through commercial harvesting (Ali, 2004). A summary of statistics regarding the working schemes of the private forests is given below in the table.

Table 2. Working Schemes 1-3 of Private Forests in Chilas, Darel and Tangir (in ha)

Recently, NAFD has come up with a Draft Working Plan (2002-2013) of Private Forests from which the above figures are derived.

The following table shows forest classification and land use in Diamer district.

Table 3. Productivity-based forest classification and ancillary land use in Chilas, Darel and Tangir forests in (ha)

Table 4. Trees and volume in private forests in Chilas, Darel and Tangir

Table 5. Forest area by legal status (ha)

Source for Tables 2-5: Rao, A. L. and A. H. Marwat. 2003. NASSD Background Paper: Forestry. IUCN Pakistan, Northern Areas Program, Gilgit.