Forestry in Ganzi

by Pamela Logan, October 13, 1998

Oro is a small Tibetan village on the bank of the Wolong River in Nyagchuk (Yajiang) County in western Sichuan. Some thirty years ago loggers came and clear-cut the old growth forest that once carpeted the mountainsides on both sides of the river. Scrub grew up to cover the land, and in the natural course of things seeds arrived from other areas to establish new young trees: pine, larch, aspen, spruce, and fir. By 1994 some of the pines were as high as 4 meters (13 feet), with a diameter of about 10 cm (4 inches). But then, in October of that year, a wildfire came to rage across 10,000 mu (about two square miles) of land.. With no trees large enough to withstand the flames, the slopes were again stripped bare.

Burned forest in Yajiang County. On the right is a pine tree that was only partially burned.

Li Guiguo is a Tibetan born in Oro in a traditional stone house. His family has been enriched by the logging trade: a cousin bought a truck and began shipping timber to the markets in central Sichuan. With this money they were able to improve their home. But he knows that the wealth brought by timber has exacted a huge cost, for he watched the forests around his village burn. "The villagers put water on their houses to save them. People were terrified," he says, showing how the flames came within a hundred meters of his ancestral home--a disaster that would have been far less devastating if a mature forest had remained on these slopes.

Deforestation on the Tibetan plateau has been highlighted recently by reports of devastating floods in central and eastern China. Recognizing the serious environmental cost of continued timber harvest, the Chinese government had already planned a gradual phase-out of logging in western Sichuan, southern Qinghai, and eastern Tibet Autonomous Region, regions where an estimated half of original forest reserves have already been cut. Now, the floods have pushed Beijing to speed up the program, enacting a total ban on logging that began on Sept 1. Logging companies have until June of next year to bring out already-felled timber, after which lumber markets will permanently close.

Home improved using money earned in the timber industry.

Closing down the timber industry--long western Sichuan's biggest money-earning activity--can be likened to an economic wildfire that wrecks havoc at every level of society. Part-time and seasonal forestry workers are being sent back to their villages with no severance pay or hope of retraining. Drivers who formerly carried timber to market now wonder how they will recoup their investment in costly vehicles. Restaurant and hostel operators face a steep loss of clientele as traffic diminishes. Even government employees in unrelated departments are affected by the sudden reduction of earnings from sale of permits for cutting: "The government does not have enough money to pay cadres now," says Gyalten Losang Shamba Rinpoche, who is deputy director of the People's Congress of Ganzi Prefecture.

The prospect of one million out-of-work loggers has moved the government to allocate 20 billion yuan for retraining nationally. It's not entirely clear how and by whom the money will be spent, but it seems that logging companies will be responsible for a major portion of it. According to the plan, one-third of full-time timber workers will be taught to plant trees. Already there are rumors of soon-to-be-unemployed loggers in some areas demonstrating against the timber-cutting ban.

The purpose my current mission is to find a way to bring international aid to assist in replanting. Crucial to the mission is Canadian environmental planner and architect William Semple, who has been involved with projects on the Tibetan plateau for many years. We are looking at creating a model reforestation project in Nyachuk near Oro Village, which was at the very nexus of the 1994 fire.

William Semple photographing fire-damaged forest.

To say that forests in China are all controlled by the government is basically true, but something of an oversimplification. Some forests are owned by the prefecture, some by the province, and some by the national government. Others (about one-third) are "community forests" and belong to local townships, which are free to harvest or protect the timber as they see fit. Still others are protected by law and may not be cut. The logging companies, too, are government owned--either at the county, prefecture, provincial, or national level. These days most of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. As forests are depleted cutters must go deeper into the mountains to find marketable timber, so costs have been rising. Meanwhile, the industry has been shrinking, so that fewer workers are supporting an untenable number of retirees.

The government has been encouraging and paying for replanting for many years, although they have not come close to keeping pace with deforestation. In 1987 they instituted an annual national tree-planting day in early spring on which every government unit is required to send its entire work force out to plant trees. They allotted land and established nurseries to raise seedlings that are purchased by the units. Nowadays the seedlings are also bought by logging companies and others to satisfy a law requiring tree-cutters to make good their harvest.

Zhang Heping is a career forester in charge of a small nursery operated outside Kangding town. The nursery was established in 1958. He and his 15 employees plant 90% spruce, the remainder being aspen. The tiny seedlings are tended carefully for four years--"during the first few years the trees grow only a few cm a year. Later on, a pine can grow as much as a meter a year," he explains. When they reach about 25 cm (10 inches) high they are ready for transplanting.

KAF team interviewing nursery director Zhang Heping.	Spruce seedlings at the Kangding nursery.

Because the young, transplanted trees are so tiny, it's difficult to see them from a distance. One thing that Bill Semple taught me on this mission is that you have to hike up a few hills and look closely before you can see what is going on.

Behind the nursery is a fine mixed forest that they planted 30 years ago. "If this slope had been left to itself, it would have taken more than 70 years to reach this height," Zhang told us. The grove is far from mature, but it is healthy. Zhang explains the planting technique. First, small plants and shrubs are pulled up and left on the surface as mulch. Next, in some areas, the slope is carved into 1.5 meter wide terraces; in other areas the earth is left as it is. Holes 30 cm wide by 25 cm deep are made and the seedling inserted. Three layers of dirt are heaped up around the base, and the seedling then lifted out slightly in order to get maximum root extension.

Replanted forest in Yajiang County.

Nurseries in Ganzi are run like businesses, and do not receive any subsidy apart from their initial allocation of land. The government would like to encourage people to start more nurseries, and does so by making loans available to entrepreneurs. The average employee at Zhang's nursery makes 500 yuan ($68) a month. Seedling prices are set by the market. Zhang says they are already planning to expand in order to satisfy the expected rise in demand. But there is an inevitable four-year lead time before seedlings are ready to be moved to the mountains.

With the sudden acute shortage of building material and government mandates to protect denuded slopes from erosion, forestry would appear to be a growth industry. Yet there are impediments to ordinary farmers getting a piece of the action. There is a large initial investment, and little precedent for individual families taking charge of land that was formerly forested. Biologist William Bleisch reports that in Guizhou Province growing trees would be more profitable than growing beans if farmers could just be persuaded to plant them. After 7-8 years a farmer could begin to cut selectively, and sell the poles at a profit. If you ask Guizhou villagers why they plant beans and not trees, they will tell you that people will readily go into a forest and cut timber, but they do not steal beans because "that would be stealing food" which is taboo. Rural farmers cannot easily accept that a forest is just another kind of crop.

Officials in Derge (Dege) County told me last year that trees were being planted faster than they are being cut; yet my observations show that bare slopes are the rule, not the exception. Most every villager we asked spoke of old-growth forests as a long-ago thing, a memory from childhood. A few mountainsides (often those near important monasteries such as Palpung in Derge) are off-limits to cutting, and villages must go elsewhere for timber. Dorje, who hales from Gonlo township in Ganzi county, said "There are trees near my village but we're not allowed to cut them. In the past we bought our wood at a market in Ganzi for 100 yuan for a 5 meter long, 30 cm diameter log. Now that market is closed."

The Sept 1 ban on tree-cutting makes an exception for villagers harvesting timber to build their own homes and public buildings such as monasteries. Thus, those townships that have preserved or replanted their forest are lucky indeed. Dorje Tsering, a carpenter from Gaba township in Kangding county, says that in his area "it's not hard to get wood for buildings. We go 3 km to get wood and bring it back in a truck. We plant 7 or 8 trees for each one we cut." He told us that once natural forest covered the mountains above his home, but it had been cut long ago. Now, in its place are scattered young trees, struggling to survive.

Clear-cutting a forest, then re-planting with a single species, may be efficient commercial forestry but it is a poor substitute for nature, according to Bill Semple. Natural forest generally contains a mixture of species. In Ganzi, fir and spruce grow side by side, along with other species such as larch, birch, and aspen. Conifer seedlings grow best when they are sheltered by larger trees that protect them from wind and hold moisture in the soil. On a bare slope the soil is often too dry and the trees never get started. And, as the people of Oro Village discovered, a forest that lacks mature trees is vulnerable to fire.

The species being harvested for timber is predominantly fir. There are other considerations in choosing species to plant, such as halting erosion most rapidly, developing the area for ecotourism, and creating habitat for wild animals. The Chinese "scientific" method of reforestation used in Ganzi calls for monoculture, with trees planted in neat rows. We are currently considering whether other methods of replanting might be better.

Old growth forest in Dege County, still standing in October, 1998 (after the logging ban). Hope is that it will survive for centuris to come.

Now, suddenly, there is political will in Beijing to regenerate eastern Tibet's primeval forest. Yet there are huge obstacles, too: inadequate numbers of seedlings, insufficiently trained work force, questionable planting technique, dried out hillsides, and of course the familiar devils of inefficiency and corruption. In a region of such obstinate poverty, illegal timber harvest for the black market will be hard to thwart. Yet it seems that at last the political atmosphere is open to outside intervention, innovation, and stern measures that reduce black marketeering. In the future, 1998 may be noted as the beginning of Tibetan forests' triumphant return.