Community forestry intervention in Nepal is essentially an institution building process that aims for a sustainable and equitable forest management system at the local level. Operational Guidelines are available which guide the interventionists in terms of the required field procedure. The Operational Guidelines emphasise on 'Interest Group Meetings,' which is actually at the heart of the intervention process. Those meetings aim for genuine consensus building for attaining ultimate sustainability and equity objectives. This work intends to look at the possibilities of non-community forestry institutions that co-exist with the community forestry institutions the forestry interventions create and support. It is argued that a number of non-community forestry institutions might co-exist with the community forestry institutions. Their origin might range from indigenous through induced to sponsored. The thrust of those institutions might range from the production and financial concerns to self-help. Such institutions may be seen as a crystallised form of local 'interest groups' that tend to interact within themselves, between them and the larger community forestry system that tends to embrace them all. It is stressed that community forestry intervention in Nepal tends to overlook such prevailing institutions despite the fact that it itself is an institution building process. Potentiality, however, exists for acknowledging such institutions in a way that local interests are explored in a more holistic and pragmatic way. This essentially means initiating the modification of the existing extension process in a way that fully takes into account other prevailing institutions. The study is based on fieldwork in four community forestry user groups and the corresponding institutions in Gorkha, Tanahun, and Parbat districts during May-Jun 2002. Methodology consisted of participatory rural appraisal (PRA) and a series of informal discussions with concerned executive members, key persons and the rest of the members of the institution concerned. Oral history constituted bulk of the information source.
