Lahaul Valley, Himachal Pradesh: In the early 1990s, the residents of Yurnath and Beeling, two small villages in Himachal Pradesh’s trans-Himalayan Lahaul valley, took an extraordinary step. Through gram sabha resolutions, they imposed a complete ban on cutting standing Juniper trees in the forests they depend on.
The decision, which has been passed on to the next generation, is now showing results. Three decades later, residents say the difference is visible in the hills above them. The groves around Yurnath, Beeling, and Stingari, another village about two kilometres away, have remained noticeably more intact than the nearby slopes, where cutting continued for longer.
There is no publicly available baseline inventory for the forest patches used by Yurnath and Beeling, hence, regeneration described here is largely through residents’ observation.
Rampant tree felling and rising inter-village conflict over timber were depleting the common forest resources faster than they could regenerate naturally. The forest department’s presence was thin in remote regions (like the Lahaul valley) in the early 1990s, and formal community forest rights were not recognised by law. The two villages stepped in and asserted their local authority to protect the fragile commons essential for survival in a cold desert landscape where trees are sparse, slow-growing, and disproportionately valuable for fuel, construction, culture and shelter.
Today, the juniper tree patches in the forest of Yurnath and Beeling villages are guarded closely. Women’s collectives, locally referred to as Mahila Mandals, help monitor violations, and an informal but durable system of self-governance continues to regulate forest use even as climate change, tourism, and new pressures test its limits.
“In Lahaul, a tree is not just wood. It is warmth, shelter, and security. If you cut juniper today, you do not get it back quickly. That is why we had to draw a line together,” says Norbu Ram, former pradhan of Yurnath.
A quieter transition has also taken the pressure off the juniper trees. As LPG access expanded in rural India through central government schemes, many households reduced firewood use for daily cooking. It eased routine pressure on forest biomass, even though wood remains important for winter heating in Lahaul’s long, cold season.
The Cold-Desert Commons
In the early 1990s, residents of Yurnath and Beeling villages began confronting woodcutters on their forest paths. What started as arguments over ‘who cuts what’ soon became a question of collective survival: if every household and neighbouring village took what it could, the slopes would be stripped long before a cold-desert forest could recover.
Lahaul sits on the leeward side of the Himalaya, in a rain-shadow zone often described as a cold desert. Precipitation is low, winters are long, and temperatures can stay below freezing for weeks. In such terrain, forests do not form continuous canopies. Instead, trees appear as scattered groves and narrow bands along slopes and stream courses, with willow and poplar trees closer to water, and conifers such as juniper trees in drier, higher reaches.
Juniper is central to the conflict that started between the villages because it grows slowly and regenerates poorly under heavy pressure. A study published in ‘The Indian Forester’ warned that juniper in Himachal’s cold deserts is “under great threat due to the ever-increasing biotic pressure and poor natural regeneration.”
Juniper twigs and leaves are widely used as incense in Himalayan households and monasteries, reinforcing a cultural relationship that can both protect and strain the species, depending on how harvesting is managed. Studies from the region repeatedly note that juniper regeneration happens over decades.
Residents of Yurnath and Beeling recall that as timber began depleting from the forests faster than the slopes could recover, disagreements between villages escalated over who had the right to cut, where, and how much.
Reclaiming the Commons
Commons are shared lands such as forests, pastures, water bodies and mangroves, which cover 205 million acres, or one-fourth of India, and form the lifeline for over 350 million people, including marginalised groups like Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women. Communities across India have traditionally protected, restored and managed these commons through customary self-governance practices. These customary rights and practices, however, haven’t been formally recognised or recorded in many parts of the country.
Pressure over resources, caste and class hierarchies and environmental degradation has curtailed communities’ access to commons, leading to over-exploitation of commons and exposing them to climate vulnerabilities and rural distress.
Despite these challenges, communities across India are showcasing that reclaiming, restoring and managing commons through customary self-governance practices plays a crucial role in their ecological, social and economic upliftment. Land Conflict Watch, a Delhi-based research group, in collaboration with Common Ground Initiative, a collaborative working on the commons is documenting case studies of successful collective action of communities around commons from across the country.
This story from Lahaul valley in Himachal Pradesh is one such example where, through collective governance, the villagers of this cold desert have been collectively protecting and preserving their forest commons for three decades.
When Gram Sabhas Drew a Line
“If my father and his group had not stopped the cutting, Beeling would have been bare today,” says Prem Singh, resident of Billing, recalling confrontations on forest paths and arguments that spilled into village meetings.
The sense of losing control over a shared resource created an unusual opening: villages that competed over timber also recognised they were exhausting the same fragile commons.
“We raised the matter in the gram sabha. Earlier, we had the right to go into the village forest and cut trees for building houses. That used to happen rampantly,” says Ram.
In the 1990s, timber rights in Himachal Pradesh operated through the state’s Forest Department’s timber distribution system. According to this system, residents could receive timber only if their timber collection rights exist in forest and land-settlement records and their requirement claim matched. Each request was verified on-site by the forest officials, reviewed with inputs from the Sarpanch and revenue department, and then cleared at the divisional level.
“While the rights were historically granted to households for construction timber, over time, the system became difficult to regulate, especially in remote forest areas with limited forest staff,” says Ram.
As pressure on the forest increased, so did conflict. Ram explains how the villagers saw timber for construction as something they could claim. Many times, people would allegedly use timber from the forest without administrative documentation. Soon, the line between legitimate need and uncontrolled extraction blurred.
“Due to the rising conflicts between the villages over forest timber, local village communities were agitated. The matter was raised in the gram sabha, which resolved to impose a ban on tree felling in the forest,” says Ram.
Yurnath and Beeling’s gram sabhas imposed a heavy fine of Rs. 25,000 on anyone caught cutting standing Juniper trees. The ban, however, did not work on paper alone.
The villagers made an action plan to monitor violations. They maintained a roster of villagers keeping watch during vulnerable periods, such as pre-winter stocking-up. Villagers volunteered to be informal ‘watchers’ who would alert the pradhan or panchayat if outsiders entered. Village meetings were held where suspected violations were discussed, and disputes were aired publicly.
The gram sabha resolutions also tried to separate ‘need’ from ‘extraction’. Dry, fallen wood could be collected, and small quantities of juniper twigs and leaves used for ritual incense were allowed. To date, every villager is allowed to carry only one bundle annually, locally called bojha, weighing between 20 and 25 kilograms, for rituals, firewood, and fodder purposes.
Cutting standing trees, however, was prohibited. The distinction between picking up what the forest sheds and felling what is still growing became a local rule of thumb.
Lahaul and Spiti district is notified as a Fifth Schedule Area, which allows local institutions like the gram sabhas, panchayats, and mahila mandals to administer certain resource rights. To implement the gram sabha resolutions, the villagers relied on the local institutions like the mahila mandals to manage scarce resources.
Women’s Collectives and Everyday Enforcement
As enforcement settled into routine, women’s collectives became more visible in the everyday policing of the commons. Himachal Pradesh has a long history of mahila mandals, which are local women’s groups that take up village-level issues ranging from savings and sanitation to public works and natural resource management.
In Beeling, the mahila mandal began playing a direct role in tracking suspicious activity, questioning outsiders, and pushing the panchayat to act. Though women did not patrol remote slopes alone at all hours, instead, they worked as a local ‘alert system’, wherein if anyone spotted an outsider, they would relay information to the mahila mandals. The women would then inform the pradhan or panchayat, call meetings when a pattern of violations emerged, and press for fines to be imposed consistently.
“The power of the mahila mandals was social as much as procedural. They named violations publicly, refused to normalise ‘small’ cuttings, and held leaders accountable for enforcement,” said Shakuntala Changsapa, a mahila mandal member from Beeling.
Conflict, pushback, and state presence
The community-imposed ban did not sit well with the forest department, the villagers recall. It strained relations with the forest department at times. The forest department officials allegedly dismissed the local authority, even though villagers were doing the work of vigilance, panchayat members recall.
Accusing the forest department of allegedly poor oversight and weak control over tree felling, in one instance, the Yurnath panchayat complained against the then Divisional Forest Officer (DFO).
“We called the DFO a bhagoda (absconding). He had no control over the forests. And one other time we organized a chakka jam (transport strike),” says Ram.
This, the villagers say, led forest division officials to push back and raise questions about the panchayat’s forest checks, even as village members continued to monitor forest paths.
Even within the villages, accusations of bias arose among villagers when access to nearby forest patches was uneven. Households living closer to particular forest trails or juniper groves could reach them more easily, while those farther away felt they had fewer opportunities to collect wood or monitor what others were taking.
“We did not like the rule when it was introduced, as the burden of the household falls on us women who manage the household work. In the absence of access to firewood, we were restless. But we adapted, and now we use the willow trees planted within the village boundary for firewood and heating. We use one bundle for household rituals and fodder,” says Beeling’s angadwadi worker, who did not want to be named.
Willow trees grow rapidly and are typically harvested in short rotations of two to four years. The coppicing mechanism relies on the plant's ability to re-sprout vigorously from a low stump (or stool) after being cut, allowing for multiple harvests over a plantation lifetime of 20 to 25 years without replanting. This allowed the Lahouli community, especially women, to adapt to new restrictions.
A Quieter Transition: LPG and Changing Construction
Over time, household demand for wood has changed. Cooking fuel began reaching more remote panchayats by the 2000s, accelerated by rural distribution expansion under central schemes like the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin LPG Vitrak 2009 and the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana 2016. Research from other parts of rural India suggests that households that adopt LPG tend to spend less time collecting firewood, even if many continue to use a mix of fuels.
“Once LPG cylinders became available, our dependence on firewood for everyday cooking naturally declined, though in winter we still need wood for heating,” says Nawang Upasak, Lama (Buddhist priest) of Keylong, Lahaul’s headquarters.
A move from wood-heavy traditional construction to reinforced concrete and cement masonry also reduced the need for wooden beams and pillars for the construction of houses in the valley.
The transition has not eliminated firewood use as wood is still in demand for hot water and space heating in severe winters. But it has changed how often households need to cut larger timber.
“One medium-sized house requires at least 500 to 600 trees. When cement houses replaced timber homes, wooden pillars stopped being a necessity,” adds Upasak.
Climate, Tourism, and New Pressures
Today, the pressure points in the Lahaul valley look different. Studies in the region describe Lahaul-Spiti as a cold desert district experiencing climatic variability, including changes in temperature and precipitation patterns. Locals echo that shift through what they see on slopes and along streams - drying willows, uncertain snowfall, and longer periods of low moisture that make forest regeneration harder.
“The winters are changing. Snowfall is not like before, and we already worry about water for the next season,” says Singh.
Then came a step-change in connectivity. The Atal Tunnel at Rohtang was inaugurated on 3 October 2020, enabling year-round road access to Lahaul-Spiti. For the locals, the tunnel reduced winter isolation and improved access to healthcare, markets, and services. On the other hand, it intensified tourism traffic, bringing waste, road pressure, and new commercial demands into valleys that were not designed for high-volume visitation.
Wildlife dynamics, too, are changing. Pastoralists and farmers speak of shifting predator and livestock interactions, wolves and other wild carnivores are part of the landscape, but several villages report that free-ranging dogs have emerged as a growing threat to livestock in recent years, adding another layer of stress to rural livelihoods.
The population of free-ranging dogs increases in areas where food waste and human activity increase. This can intensify attacks on livestock and wildlife. A field report from the Wildlife Institute of India calls this a conservation threat in the Spiti Valley.
Beyond Yurnath and Beeling, neighbouring villages continue to negotiate grazing and forest-use rules, reminding residents that governance is not a settled ‘model’ but an evolving practice. Disputes in areas such as Darcha and Sissu villages in Lahaul, locals note, often flare around the same questions Yurnath faced decades ago: who has access, what counts as ‘need’, and who enforces limits.
“In this cold desert, the one who plants a tree is responsible for it,” concludes Ram. In a landscape where a single tree can take decades to mature, that ethic matters. Yurnath and Beeling’s ban did not emerge from formal titles or perfect enforcement but it emerged from a collective decision and years of negotiation for practising restraint.
As climate stress and development accelerate in the trans-Himalaya, the story of the two villages is a reminder that commons protection is about the everyday social work of making those rules stick.
“Our fathers protected these junipers, and you can still see life around them, ibex on the slopes, and even snow leopard movement higher up. With warming temperatures, who knows what will happen to the junipers in the years ahead?” adds Singh.