- Environment
- Planet Possible
As wildfires increase in Himalayan pine forests, can restoring oaks help?
Heavy logging during the British colonial era and replanting with a single species—fast-growing pine—weakened forest health. Now, locals are making room for more oaks to regrow.
Parwara, IndiaIn the Himalayan foothills of northern India, Vimla Bisht spends nearly every day gathering dry pine needles from the parched forest into a giant cloth sack, which she balances on her head for the long trek back home. She uses the needles to bed her cattle, though she collects them to safeguard her village against the drought’s side effects: fire.
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