Kyrgyz conservationists save trees by helping farmers

Environmental groups are aiming to rescue Kyrgyzstan’s vast forests of fruits and nuts from the perils of overharvesting and climate change by improving the lives of the people who live and labor among the trees.

“Our fruit and nut forests cover [1.56 million acres] with more than 300 different species of tree,” says Kaiyrkul Shalpykov of the National Academy of Sciences in Bishkek. “But the increasing numbers of people living in the forest and the economic situation in the country, as well as climate change, all impact the forests.”

Jeremy Cherfas, a biologist at Bioversity International in Italy, which has worked with local conservation initiatives in Kyrgyzstan, says that farmers have needed little encouragement — in fact, they have been moving in that direction of their own accord.

“Climate change is increasing average temperature, and that makes higher altitudes tomorrow more like lower altitudes today,” Mr. Cherfas said. “So farmers have been trying out varieties from lower down on their farms.”

Despite the toll the human population has taken on the local environment, conservationists say the landscape stretching out around Arslanbob represents an ideal combination of integrated forest and farmland that could hold the key to preserving biodiversity.

“We are not in the business of conservation biodiversity for its own sake,” said Mr. Cherfas. “It has to be useful, and then the farmers will conserve it. We can’t just go in and say, ‘Don’t chop that tree down,’ if it doesn’t have a greater value alive than dead.”

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