During my first visit to Sikkim in the winter of 2010, I went to a place called Dzongu – a land which is revered and considered sacred by the indigenous Rong, or Lepcha, people. It was dark, and I was outside taking in the fresh, cold mountain air. As I looked around, I could faintly see three lights far apart from each other shining dimly at a much higher elevation. Too distant to be able to make out easily, I asked my host in the village, Lakpa daju (elder brother), a middle-aged man with a default smile and zeal to do something for Dzongu and the Lepcha people, "What are those lights in the darkness on the other side of the hill?" This was my first trip to Dzongu, and I had reached at night. Somehow in the darkness of night, I had the impression that this house was at one extreme of the hill and nothing lay beyond it. Lakpa came out curiously, looked in the direction I was pointing and said, "Oh those? Lights from the houses…" He went in promptly, perhaps because of the biting cold outside.
I stayed out for a while, trying to enjoy the dark silhouette of the mountains and valleys nearby, but it was very cold and I had started to shiver, so I went in looking for some warmth in Lakpa's wood-fire kitchen. After taking a sip of raksi (rice wine) he said, "Those are newly built houses, they were not there earlier. But soon there will be many more." He went on to explain his understanding of village expansion: "People got married; now they cannot live together with the family. Nuclear family is the reason; everyone wants to build their own house." The property, mostly land, in the hills of Sikkim gets distributed among the siblings. Many people use it when they want to build a new house, while some prefer to save it for the future. Five children for a family can translate to five more houses in the near future for which they would likely have to use a patch of land that was earlier designated for agriculture. Lakpa started counting the probable number of houses he expected would be built on that hillside in the next year. He reminisced about seeing bharal, or Himalayan blue sheep, every time he would go down to the river, and tried to recall the last time he had seen a musk deer near the village. He then promised to show me around the following day.
I got up early the next morning and walked to the hilltop to get a better view of the landscape with Lakpa. I was introduced to some of the villagers and also to my local guide Pema, a man in his early thirties who had finished his bachelor's degree and had to return to the village because of family responsibilities. After some formal exchanges, the villagers responded to my interest and started talking about the reasons for forest fragmentation and depletion. According to them, the increased demand for land related to various purposes such as building houses, agriculture and road building, along with natural disasters like earthquakes and landslides had resulted in the fragmentation of forest areas. Nearly 50 percent of Sikkim is covered with forest, most of which lies outside protected areas, in a highly dynamic, human-dominated landscape in the form of Khasmal, Gaucharan, reserve forest and private forest. In Khasmal forests, local people have free access to procure required timber and firewood after obtaining formal permission from the Forest Department, while Gaucharan areas allow for animal grazing and collection of deadwood and fodder. However, in the case of Sikkim, grazing is not permitted except for a few sites.
Human and ecosystem benefits
While highlighting the value of forest fragments, the villagers explained that even building materials for construction – planks, building poles, bamboo, etc. – come from forest areas, both private and government controlled, with prior approval from the concerned department for extraction. People depend heavily upon these forest patches in deriving materials for their daily needs such as fuel wood, fodder, food, medicines, and dry leaves to mix with cow dung to make manure, among other things. Some people even collect and sell non-timber forest products (NTFP) including vegetables like ferns, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and fruits like wild avocado, lapsi (Nepali hog plum), and acorns from the forest patches for their sustenance. Apart from these direct benefits, many forest patches contribute valuable ecosystem services such as providing drinking water sources and pollination and dispersal to cash crops, while wild plants help to regulate an area's micro-climate and at the same time enhance the aesthetic quality.