Summary In recent years, the impacts of rapidly increasing populations of feral horses and deer on the vegetation and stability of soils have become highly visible and widespread in Kosciuszko National Park. We investigated these impacts in the White Cypress Pine (Callitris glaucophylla Joy Thomps. & L.A.S. Johnson) – White Box (Eucalyptus albens Benth) woodlands of the lower Snowy River valley. This woodland is a component of the White Box‐Yellow Box‐Blakely's Red Gum Grassy Woodland and Derived Native Grasslands complex that is nationally listed as a critically endangered ecological community. To investigate the severity of the impacts of feral horse (Equus caballus) and deer (Dama dama and Rusa unicolor) in the valley in 2013 and 2017/18, we surveyed fenced exclosures and paired grazed plots that were first established and surveyed in 1984 and re‐surveyed in 1987. Using LFA and VAST methodologies (not used in 1987), we compared the relative response of environmental variables in plots inside and outside the exclosures in an attempt to ascertain recent herbivore impacts. While there was no evidence of horses or deer from dung surveys in 1987, in 2018, 84% of the dung was from horses, 13% from deer, 1% from rabbits and 2% from macropods. Total herbivore dung density increased fourfold since the 1987 survey. On the understanding that all plots had the same starting condition in 1984 with respect to prior herbivory, we deduce that horses and deer are having significant ecological impacts. There was a far greater cover of understorey plants and the midstorey was denser and taller inside the exclosures. Outside the exclosures, the vegetation cover was far more sparse and soil erosion was active and extensive. The total number of invertebrates captured in small pitfall traps was nearly twice as many within the exclosures compared to the grazed plots. The dense even‐aged regrowth overstorey stands of White Cypress Pine, inside and outside the exclosures, have changed little in 34 years.

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Conservation of Chure landscape is at the limelight of public policy debate given its geo-ecological and socio-economic prominence and its real and perceived environmental degradation. The dominant narrative of the Chure environmental crisis coupled with increasing pressures of some political constituencies prompted government’s declaration of the Chure as Environmental Protected Area. This policy response of the state has engendered contestations and dissonance among different actors associated with the Chure. This paper is based on review of relevant literature, direct observation and participation in the national and regional policy dialogues and public debate. We identify two broad strands of contested actors: the ones who strongly favor the government policy decision and those who are opposing it. We argue that this can be attributed to the competing understandings of the problem and the proposed solutions to the Chure conservation. Actors’ understandings of the Chure are based on their own identical political strands and do not necessarily reflect the underlying causes at the ground. The politics of scientific facts and evidences is also critical to this contestation. We identified three major strands of management approaches in the Chure discourse: state centric, community based and state-community collaborative. Deliberative scrutiny of current policies and attention to the political ecology of conservation could help arrive at negotiated understanding of the problem and sustainable approach to the Chure management.

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Chure forests, which is one of the youngest and most fragile landscapes of Nepal, continue to be degraded due to resource exploitation and conflict over its management. This region is considered to be the lifeline to down-stream communities -mainly for water -while inhabiting millions of poor and rural people that depend on natural resources -especially forests commons. Government initiatives to manage Chure have escalated contestations in the recent years. Its decision to declare Chure landscape as 'Environmental Protection Area' manifests a protection-centric management approach. This research scrutinises the genesis of contestation on Chure management utilising three-elements of conflicts described by Brown et al. (2017). It analyses power-relation to demonstrate potential implications on Chure landscape management as well as conflict resolution options, in the changed political context of federal Nepal. Our research reveals that all stakeholders are well aware of the continuous degradation of Chure landscape and have agreed on discovering the common locus of sustainable management. However, the state-community contestation still persists due to divergent understandings of degradation. Despite multiple strands of management options, contextualised communitybased approach still appears to be an appropriate option to solve this persistent contestation, building on the practices of community forestry and historic failures of top-down, protectioncentric management practice. The newly elected provincial and local governments could further facilitate a more effective management of Chure landscape through resolving the contentious state-community conflict.