The dreamed of being a doctor but Madhuri Karki's career took a little detour. Today, she is Nepal's first and only forest pathologist. Madhuri is our very own tree doctor.

In two decades, Madhuri has given free checkups to more trees than she can count, diagnosing their diseases and treating them. In doing so, she has raised awareness about forest conservation, which stands her in good stead today as Nepal's only female District Forest Officer (DFO).

"My education prepared me to deal with the physical well-being of the forest, but dealing with people's ignorance required more work," Madhuri says wryly. She has now learnt hands-on how to use Nepal's community forestry movement to save our woodlands. As DFO in Bhaktapur, she has handed over most of the district's 1,900 hectares of government land to village management committees. The result is there for all to see: the deep green slopes south of Bhaktapur.

Madhuri is used to ups and downs. In Telkot, where locals collected firewood and the army conducted exercises, she was blamed for everything that went wrong. Madhuri realised the solution lay with devolution, but for this, she had to fight the higher-up bureaucracy in Kathmandu. Her perseverance worked.

As the locals protected their forests, wild animals returned. Once, villagers attacked a marauding leopard. Madhuri tried to save its life, but the animal died. "It would have lived if there was a vet in the village," she says. Another time, she apprehended poachers with 7kg of rare yarchagumba in Lalitpur.

"What makes me happiest is when I see central planning benefiting people in the village," she says. If it was any other bureaucrat saying it, that remark may have been a clich?. But not with Madhuri.

(Khadga Singh)