Six people, including representatives from the Mahalla Foundation, the Committee for Forestry and private farmers took part in the tour sponsored by the ELS to look at the community forestry initiatives.

The Nuratau Kyzylkum Biosphere Reserve project is one of first projects in Uzbekistan that tries to integrate conservation and local communities needs. Its goals are to protect wildlife and nature and, at the same time demonstrate, that these resources can be used to improve communities’ living standards and those of future generations.

At the beginning of the tour, the participants met the district authorities for information on the socioeconomic situation of the Farish district. The group stopped at the project Visitors’ Center where the Nuratau-Kyzylkum project experts made a presentation on how the Nuratau project works with their partners in community based forestry and reforestation activities, ecological tourism and hunting.

The Centre, re-built in 2003 by the Nurata-Kizilkum project from an old community building, is a friendly place where interested visitors, teachers and children can receive information on nature friendly development.

Together with the Nuratau community forestry initiative staff and representatives of the local Forestry Committee, the study tour participants visited farmlands in the mountain areas and desert zones where communities have been helped by the project to plant trees for income and prevent desertification. During these visits the ELS group met the local population, exchanged information and saw practical demonstrations of forestry and orchard planting.

Of great interest to the ELS project was the Forestry Joint Management Council which brings together all parties from land users to relevant local authorities to ensure mutual understanding and cooperation. Also of interest was the rent agreement developed by the Nuratau-Kyzylkum project. This agreement provides clearer and improved terms for the participation of local people in forestry in terns of local people and Forestry Committee working together for a mutual benefit.

At the end of the study tour the participants exchanged practices with the local farmers on farming saxaul in desert zones. They also made their recommendations on how to utilize the lessons and experience learned from of the Nuratau community forestry project in Karakalpakstan and Namangan within the ELS projects.

For more information on the Establishment of the Nuratau-Kyzylkum Biosphere Reserve as a Model for Biodiversity Conservation in Uzbekistan see: http://www.nature.uz/projects/index.php

You can see photographs of the Nuratau-Kyzylkum Biosphere Reserve at: www.nuratau.uz