Old way of life a threat to forests

The forest is providing a different type of living, as rangers, for villagers. Two of them are Chikya (left), who became a ranger last year, and Dawa (but a different Dawa from the man featured in the story). They have a rest at a bunkhouse that dates to their lumbering days.

One hour, two . . .

"Tibet's environment is quite fragile. The clear-cut hillsides won't have recovered in 100 years. That's why we must forbid large-scale lumbering," said Tsewang Jigme, director of the Nyingchi forestry bureau.

He said lumbering was Nyingchi's pillar industry in the '90s, contributing 80 percent of the prefecture's gross domestic product. Sixty-three logging mills, each working three shifts, cut and transported timbers to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and to other provinces.

Tsewang said only about 60 percent of each log, the best part of the stem, was used. The rest of the tree, its limbs and branches, was wasted.

Fallen timbers lay everywhere on the mountains, covered by thick yellow moss and fungus. Tsewang said that when mills cut more trees than they could handle or found the quality too low, they left the wood to decay.

"After 20 years of logging, Tibet's forest area rapidly shrunk," the official said. "Many places that used to be leafy are now attacked by sandstorms. Some rural areas have been never more raw."

Ngawang, a local Tibetan who worked with his ax since the early '80s, said many verdant slopes were shaved and it became harder and harder to find old trees, so by the end of the '90s, they had to go deeper into the forests. "At first we could find a good tree in an hour, and then two hours, three hours. In the end we needed a whole day if our luck was good."

'My only skill'

Once the government began to discourage commercial logging in Nyingchi, the lumber mill operations were felled, too. Where once there were 63, there is now one. The prefecture's logging allowance is 200,000 cubic meters a year, which covers the five trees each family can take plus a bit for government needs.

Almost all of the 186,000 or so people in Nyingchi were affected by the conservation policy. Some lost their jobs at the mill, others lost their income from selling logs or boards to the mills.

But few of these ethnic Tibetans went to big cities to be migrant workers because of their religious traditions and the huge differences between their lifestyle and that of Han Chinese.

"Even if I went to Beijing, what else could I do?" Dawa said. "My only skill is cutting trees down."

The farthest he has ever gone from home is Lhasa, 400 kilometers away. Every three years he makes a pilgrimage to Potala Palace, a sacred site to Buddhists.

No reason now

While the local government seeks ways to rejuvenate its economy, some of the people who once sought the oldest, tallest evergreens are now making goods from wood byproducts such as limbs and coarse, woody debris.

Unemployed loggers are looking for work planting trees in the clear-cut areas, a task on which the Tibet autonomous region has spent 600 million yuan since 2006.

"The point is to make sure the local Tibetan can make a long-term living off the forest without cutting it down," said Liu Rongkun, a project manager for the Pendeba Society of Qomolangma National Nature Preserve. "People living under the Himalaya range gave up their traditional lifestyle to save the disappearing forests, and we can't just cut off their income and provide no alternative industry."

Working with the local government, the society has provided former loggers vocational training such as cooking lessons and tourism lectures to prepare them for jobs as cooks or guides.

In addition, the central government has spent 391 million yuan since 2005 on subsidies for the former lumbermen. Chimed, 35, said her family gets 18,000 yuan a year for giving up logging. "The money almost equals the income from logging, so we have no reason to cut more trees."

According to Chimed, logging was not only hard work but also very dangerous. In the earlier days, at least two men worked together. One cut the wood, the other was a safety lookout, watching the tree's movement. But once the men started using power saws, they usually worked alone, and the noise from the saw masked the sound of moving trees. Chimed's brother's back was broken by a falling tree, and he had to rest in bed for six months.

To encourage locals to develop new businesses, the prefecture subsidized Chimed's family with 9,000 yuan to found a small hotel - a cozy home-stay place that has 14 beds and charges 40 yuan a night. Last year, 153 tourists visited her family and brought in more than 15,000 yuan.

She said nine of the 50 households in her village have opened such hotels with government subsidies, and more people are making money from tourism.

Tenzin, the prefecture's tourism bureau official, told China Daily that tourism revenue in 2010 reached 1.1 billion yuan, contributing one-fourth of Nyingchi's output for the year. She said 1.52 million tourists were attracted by Nyingchi's virgin forests and the wild landscape of Brahmaputra Grand Canyon last year.

Forests also produced other income, from herbs and fungus. A single chong cao, caterpillar fungus, is worth 40-60 yuan. (In traditional medicine, it is used to treat fatigue, fight cancer and boost sex drive.) The protection of the woods also protects this herb, and a local Tibetan can make more than 10,000 yuan a year digging it in the wild.

Chikya, who is 35 and a former logger, became a forest ranger last year. He said many men in his village joined the ranger group, and the village pays them 900 yuan a month.

They gather at 9 am in a bunkhouse they used to live in while lumbering and patrol the surrounding forest. If they find people logging illegally, they stop them and fine them 500 yuan for each fallen tree.

"Few people cut woods now, because our money comes from living trees not dead ones," Chikya said.