In Search Of Degraded Forests For Restoration

• In Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya, restoration practitioners were faced with several challenges, like growing land-use changes for tourism, habitat fragmentation and a narrow window for plantation.
• In this region, restoration is not a matter of digging pits and planting saplings. It is a deeply layered process, one that unfolds across social boundaries, cultural landscapes, steep slopes, and shifting community priorities, writes the author of this commentary.
• Restoration must begin with community engagement and building trust. While landowners are enthusiastic about restoration, they fear losing access to their land.
• The views in this commentary are that of the author.

The United Nations has declared 2021-2030 as the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, a global call to revive the planet’s degraded landscapes. The aim is ambitious but essential: prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems worldwide. This call comes at a time when the planet is facing accelerating biodiversity loss, erratic climate patterns, and growing inequities in how natural resources are accessed and managed. Restoration is now viewed not only as an environmental necessity, but also as a social and economic imperative for a more resilient future.

The idea of restoring forests sounds simple: find a patch of degraded land, plant native trees, and let nature do the rest. But in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya, where ecological urgency meets complex social realities, restoration is not a matter of digging pits and planting saplings. It is a deeply layered process, one that unfolds across social boundaries, cultural landscapes, steep slopes, and shifting community priorities.

In the past year, a team at ATREE-Eastern Himalaya set out to restore degraded patches across this fragile mountain ecosystem and came face to face with a reality far more intricate than any textbook could prepare it for.

Finding land to restore

Ironically, the hardest part of restoring forests is not the planting — it’s finding land to plant on.

At first glance, the Eastern Himalaya seems to have plenty of degraded patches. But on closer inspection, these barren or underused lands are often being rapidly converted to other land uses including tourism infrastructure. With the recent boom in eco-tourism, land that once lay neglected is now being cleared for homestays, resorts, parking lots, or viewing points. This trend is particularly visible in Darjeeling and Kalimpong districts, where scenic views and cool climates have made remote villages the next “hot” destination for urban visitors.

We, the ATREE team, also encountered the problem of land-use trade-offs. Sometimes, an apparently abandoned agricultural field seems ideal for restoration — until we ask ourselves: are we contributing to land-use change? Is it ethical to reforest land that could otherwise grow food crops? In a world grappling with food insecurity and rural livelihoods in flux, these questions can’t be brushed aside.

Negotiating trust and tenure

When we do identify a possible site, the next step is community engagement. Restoration cannot proceed without the landowner’s consent. This is where the next challenge arises: negotiating access, trust, and long-term commitment. And that’s where the complexity deepens.

People in the hills are deeply connected to their land. Land is not just property; it’s legacy, livelihood, and identity. And while many landowners are curious and even enthusiastic about restoration, they often hesitate. One recurring fear is that once restoration begins, they may lose their rights over the land. They ask: “Will this land become part of the forest department? Will I still be able to graze cattle or collect firewood?”

Many landowners are understandably sceptical. They ask the hard questions: “Why are you investing in my land?” “Will I, or my sons, get the land back after restoration?” “Are you doing this for the forest department?” “What’s the real deal here?” Some remark, “This sounds too good to be true.” Others grow wary when our team begins monitoring sapling survival or laying out sample plots with forestry tools. “You’re bringing in outsiders… are you measuring our land for something else?” they ask.

These aren’t just passing doubts; they’re rooted in a long history of people feeling left out of conservation narratives. There’s often a lingering fear that once a restoration project starts, the land will slip from their hands into the domain of government control. Despite our repeated clarifications that land ownership remains with them and that our project does not involve any transfer of rights, the anxiety persists.

In some cases, even after a verbal agreement and initial preparation, landowners backtrack, halting months of preparation. Perhaps a relative will return from town with other plans. Perhaps an offer for a tourist homestay comes in. Or perhaps, the sheer uncertainty of it all feels too big to risk.

The rocky slopes of reality

When landowners do agree, they often set certain conditions. Sometimes they say, “We’ll only give you the land if you restore the entire plot”, which sounds fair until we see what “entire” means. Often, the land includes steep, rocky slopes with thin soils and high exposure. Such sites are at high risk for sapling mortality, especially during dry winters and hot summers when wind can kill tender plants.

From a restoration perspective, such patches have low success rates unless intensively managed. Yet refusing to restore these portions may sour our relationship with landowners who want their entire land rejuvenated.

We’re left juggling ecological feasibility with social diplomacy.

Piecing together a patchwork landscape

The fragmentation of land is another significant hurdle. In Darjeeling, a large portion of land is still under government-owned, privately-managed tea estates, a colonial legacy from the British era. Outside these estates, private holdings are often small and scattered.

To have a meaningful impact on biodiversity and ecosystem function, restoration needs to be done at scale, across large, connected landscapes. But with land split among multiple owners, coordinating restoration requires more than ecological planning; it requires social navigation. Bringing together multiple families or community members, each with their own priorities, rivalries, and histories, is no easy feat.

Restoration in human-dominated landscapes and community-owned lands, we’ve learned, is as much about mending social fabric as it is about planting trees.

Ground truthing the green

Technology has made restoration planning more efficient, or so we thought. Using satellite imagery, we often identify patches with low canopy cover, assuming them to be degraded. But remote sensing can only take us so far. The real truth lies on the ground.

A case in point: we recently identified Labdang, a village in West Sikkim, as a potential site. Satellite images showed widespread canopy loss, suggesting significant degradation. But once we visited the area, we discovered that the ‘degraded’ areas were under active large cardamom cultivation, a vital cash crop in the region. Other patches were being prepared for new plantations.

As one local farmer explained, “The rate of large cardamom has gone up this year. The variety Seramla needs open canopies for higher yields, so clearing is going on.” He added, “If you had come when the prices were down, we would have gladly offered land for restoration, but now the land is in active use.”

This was not land abandonment; it was land-use intensification. Without field surveys and local consultations, we risked misdiagnosing the landscape.

The sapling supply crisis

Even when we’ve cleared every social and logistical hurdle, one major bottleneck remains: sourcing the right species for planting.

Restoration is not about planting anything; it’s about planting the right trees. Native species that are slow-growing, late-successional, and ecologically compatible with the site. Species that provide habitat, improve soil, and support local livelihoods.

Although we follow a process of co-designing and co-identification of prioritised and ecologically important native tree species with local landowners, such saplings are hard to come by.

The region currently lacks nurseries that grow native multipurpose trees in the quantities needed for large-scale restoration. Commercial nurseries tend to focus on fast-growing species with market value, many of which are exotic and not suited for long-term ecological health.

Adding to this complexity is the narrow plantation window dictated by the Himalayan monsoon cycle. In the Eastern Himalaya, restoration plantations are almost entirely dependent on rainfall. This means the actual planting season is restricted to just a few short months, usually from late June to early September. Any delays in site preparation, landowner agreement, or sapling procurement can mean missing the entire season. Given the steep terrain, the logistics of transporting saplings and planting them before the first rains also pose a challenge. Unlike irrigated plantations elsewhere, here the success of every sapling rests heavily on timely rains and coordinated action.

Without a strong native plant supply chain, even the best restoration plans can fail before they begin.

What keeps us going

With so many challenges, one might wonder, why bother?

Because the forests of the Eastern Himalaya are worth fighting for. They are home to incredible biodiversity, vital water sources, and centuries of cultural heritage. They offer climate resilience, spiritual solace, and livelihood security. And above all, they offer a future, if we act now.

Our team continues to walk, climb, listen, negotiate, and learn. We continue to build trust with communities, train local youth, partner with government bodies, and support native nurseries. Each sapling we plant is a seed of restoration, but also hope, patience, and partnership.

Restoration in the Darjeeling-Sikkim Himalaya isn’t easy. But then again, nothing worth doing ever is.

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay India)