As part of the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, issued policy guidelines, way back in 1990, for the involvement of village communities and voluntary agencies in the regeneration of degraded forestlands. This was in response to the realisation that efforts to conserve the forest could not be undertaken by isolating the locals. JFM, in simple words, is a concept of developing partnerships between fringe forest user-groups and the Forest Depart-ment (FD) on the basis of mutual trust and jointly-defined roles and responsibilities for forest protection and development. In response to the adoption of the JFM at the national level, the Government of Karnataka also issued an order in 1993 for comprehensive implementation of the scheme in the State.