In the 19th century British colonial administrators in India took control of vast areas of forestland, which they subsequently exploited through the Imperial Forest Service. A good part of this forestland had originally been managed communally in accordance with local rules and regulations. With the coming of the British Raj (colonial rule), conflicts broke out between rural populations and the Forest Service. Village systems of resource use broke down, and forest degradation accelerated rapidly. The Chipko Movement, founded in the 1970s with the aim of conserving forests in the Himalayas, is one recent response to these developments. Before the Himalayas can become green again, however, it will first be necessary to resolve long-running conflicts. For here, just as in other areas of the world, conservation and regeneration of forests are primarily a social problem and only secondarily a biological problem. No-one has demonstrated this more convincingly than Visheswar Dutt Saklani, the man who planted 30,000 trees.
