Does Buffer Zone Buffering? : Case Study on Community Forest and Socio-economic Status of Gitanagar User Committee of Bufferzone Chitwan National Park, Nepal

The study found that community livelihood has dependent on the traditional subsistence agriculture and use of forest resource. Dependency on the natural resource was found to be high and use of alternative source of energy is low which had adverse impact on the forest.Bufferzone programme appears to not to decrease need pressure. Distributions of Bufferzone forest resources were found to be unequal among the households.Information on 70 household was gathered to tie up with vegetation study. For the tree species 12 sample plots, 24 plots for shrubs and herbs were studied. Of these 2 tree species, 22 shrubs and 20 herbs were studied. Density, species diversity, IVI, basal area, volume, biomass and annual yield of plant were low. Regeneration of plant species was low because anthropogenic pressure on forest of Bufferzone found to be high.