In January 2026, the forest department began felling dhupi (Cryptomeria japonica) across the rain shadow ridges of Gupti and Mungrang in the Sadam Hills of Namchi District, southern Sikkim, along with chir pine and juniper.
Officials of the Namchi Territorial Division are removing dhupi from several reserved forests in the region. According to the department, the objective is to conserve natural water sources, with cleared plantations to be replaced by ecologically beneficial species, including oak. The department describes the operation as selective thinning, a recognised forestry practice carried out with the approval of the Union environment ministry, aimed at improving forest quality rather than reducing forest cover.
On the ground, the effects are already legible. Bhim Bahadur Pradhan, a 90-year-old resident of Sadam village who worked as plantation labour when the dhupi saplings were planted in the early 1950s, remembers officials telling workers at the time that dhupi would secure the region’s water. He remembers the slopes as grassland before the plantation and yielding fodder, firewood, and other produce through native species such as lopsey, okhar, uttis, chaap and rhododendron. These areas became a closed forest that the residents can’t legally access for grazing, fuelwood or livestock fodder. The situation got worse after the state banned green felling in 1995, permitting only dead, dying, and diseased trees to be removed.
Dhupi was planted deliberately and served the state’s timber needs for decades. It still registers as forest in every canopy tally, and until 2000, when Sikkim banned its lopping, the state actively protected and managed it. That approach ignored what was happening underneath. Dhupi plantations choke out native plants, degrade the soil, and suppress the undergrowth that protects water springs. Now the forest department is removing the very trees it spent decades protecting, reclassifying yesterday’s protected asset as today’s liability, an easy story to read as ecology catching up with an old mistake. We see it differently, as a costly lesson: When a forest is defined merely by its timber and canopy, the rest of the ecosystem eventually sends the bill.
Yesterday’s restoration
Dhupi, when introduced in Sikkim in the nineteenth century, offered dependable construction lumber and a fast-growing, legible green canopy that colonial surveyors and state ledgers could read as progress. An introduced monoculture had been folded so thoroughly into the state’s idea of a healthy landscape that it lined the scenic roads, rebuilt the sacred buildings, and registered, in every tally, as forest.
The removal order reflects a change in how the state understands these plantations. It is also a good time to recognise that the real failure of dhupi plantations was that the resultant forests were valued only for what could be counted on a balance sheet, overlooking all the vital ecological roles that defy easy measurement.
The reproduction risk and the harder path
Restoration of forest in Sadam and the larger Namchi region risks becoming the same project as before, run in reverse, and it can fail in two directions.
The first is the counting trap. Restoration can slide toward measurable targets like hectares felled, saplings planted, and canopy cover, which record implementation without registering recovery. A diverse native forest cannot be read off satellite imagery, which cannot tell it from a plantation. Even as the dhupi forests have just started to come down, the state has already launched its answer for restoration: A mission to plant a million oak trees by 2047. In many ways it is the right instinct. The oak is indigenous, chosen for water and biodiversity rather than timber, and the department spent three years learning to raise a tree whose seed rarely survives in the wild before planting a sapling in earnest, exactly the patience the last century lacked.
Where the older logic shows through is in how the mission is being accounted for. In its public announcements, the department has not set out a clear way to assess the mission’s real-world impact beyond counting planted saplings and survival rates, which is itself the concern. If success is measured only by trees in the ground and the projected litres of water recharge this estimate points to, the programme risks repeating the old pattern: Prioritising outputs that are easy to count over outcomes that are harder to verify.
The oak is indigenous, chosen for water and biodiversity rather than timber.
The second direction is creating a native monoculture. On paper, the department lists a million oaks planted as three varieties and a million planted as one would look identical on the tally sheet. Preventing this comes down to how local people are involved: whether villagers are treated as long-term stewards who manage the forest for water, grazing and other forest-based livelihoods, or merely as labour brought in for a planting day.
What should be done
The felling of dhupi is underway and the replanting of oaks has barely started. The recommendations therefore are both for what authorities can do immediately and what they need to keep in mind for the longer term. Our suggestions are as follows:
1. For the forest department: The immediate question is what happens to the dhupi timber already felled and what is marked for felling soon. It should be directed to local construction, fuel and household use, with residents brought into the felling itself. Selective, community-based felling lowers waste, reduces disturbance, and keeps people involved as density comes down.
The second immediate task is establishing an ecological baseline before more trees come down. Once a dhupi stand is felled, its original state cannot be reconstructed. Alongside hectare and oak sapling counts, the department should track three additional measures. This includes natural seedling regeneration, which shows whether native trees are actually taking root on their own, not just the saplings the department plants. The return of shrubs and grasses on the forest floor shows whether soil health and livestock fodder are coming back and the flow of local springs shows whether the water availability that downhill villages depend on is recovering. Over the longer term, oak planting must yield a mixed native forest, not an oak monoculture.
2. For state policymakers: Before the replanting expands, village forest committees and Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs), which are village-level organisations that jointly manage forest resources with the state forest department, needs real decision-making power and a defined share in the benefits of restored forests.
India’s joint forest management experience shows consultation alone is not enough. Across Indian states, JFMCs have been granted rights to use forest resources and share in benefits, but not ownership of the forest itself; without that legal standing, their authority to shape long-term management decisions remains limited. Participation requires transferring decisions and benefits, not just inviting comments. Success criteria should be fixed now, at the outset, rather than settled retrospectively against the outcomes the programme happens to produce. Those criteria should be biodiversity, hydrological function, and community participation, rather than sapling survival or projected recharge.
The future of Namchi’s restored forests
For the Sadam hills and the larger Namchi region, the near future can be described concretely. Within a few years, felled stands should yield fodder on slopes that have been barren for decades. A returning mix of native species should begin repairing the soil sponge that the conifer broke, restoring rainwater infiltration and reviving mountain springs. A forest that gives the community below it fodder, water and other real benefits gives people a reason to protect it, since upkeep follows from use rather than from instruction handed down.
“A forest shouldn’t just be handed down from above,” says Shyam Basnett, a resident of Sadam. “It has to be something we create together—a living, working landscape of native trees that gives people their daily fodder and firewood while still welcoming visitors to these slopes. If you want a forest to survive, it has to sustain our livelihoods.”
Monitoring that once required an officer on a slope can now be handled directly by local residents. Village stewards trained to track spring discharge, groundcover recovery and tree health as part of their regular routines could carry out this work using simple mobile tools. Technology is the easier part. The harder part is building a framework that gives their labour dignity and their data real weight, compensating stewards fairly and ensuring their findings actually shape departmental decisions.
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Know more
- Read about what forest conservation looks like in these hills today.
- Learn about how India’s compensatory afforestation rules weakened the authority of gram sabhas.
