Ghan Shyam Pandey is the Coordinator of GACF and Chairman of Green Foundation Nepal. The document discusses Nepal's community forestry program. It shows that community forests are national forests handed over to user groups for development, conservation, and utilization. The number of community forest user groups (CFUGs) formed has increased dramatically since the 1980s. There are now over 18,000 CFUGs managing over 1.5 million hectares of forest. Community forestry has transformed forest management in Nepal from a top-down government model in the 1970s to a bottom-up, community-based model. The success of community forestry is due to pilot projects, supportive policies and institutions, gender inclusion,