Cutting down and pollarding of forest trees as perceived by local and governmental forest stakeholders and the impact of changes in fuel source on the forest (Case study: Sarvabad city forests)

Local people are always dependent on cutting down and pollarding of Zagros forests trees to provide their livelihoods needs such as house heating, cooking, supply of livestock forage and building materials. The stakeholders also have many conflicts in terms of forest utilization, which is the main cause of many irregularities in the forest management. The present study was conducted to investigate the views of local and governmental forest stakeholders on the cutting down and pollarding of forest trees in the Almaneh village, Sarvabad city of Kurdistan province. The main tool of the research was a questionnaire whose validity was evaluated based on the opinions of specialists and its reliability surveyed through Cronbachchr('39')s coefficient. In total, the views of 115 local and governmental stakeholders were studied using a Likert scale. All data were submitted to SPSS to analyze using Kruskal wallis and Mann whitney tests. According to the results, local stakeholders stated that they currently forest trees are not severely cut down and pollarded as in the past (Average stakeholder views for cutting and pollarding were 2.3 and 4.1, respectively), and their utilization is limited to the collection of dead trees that do not damage the forest (Average stakeholder views were 4.03) and oppose the governmentchr('39')s inhibition. Natural resources specialists, despite the confirmation of the decline in these utilities in recent years (Average stakeholder views for cutting and pollarding were 3.14 and 3.9, respectively), have considered the destruction of forests, and the bilateral participation is necessary in this regard. In total, our results showed explicit signs of conflict between the views of local and governmental stakeholders to each other. In spite of the conflict of views, in general, stakeholders announced the positive impact of entering the gas into the village and changing the source of livestock forage (Average stakeholder views for cutting and pollarding were 3.79 and 4.1, respectively).