Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India involves regeneration and conservation of forests through involvement of village communities in association with the state forest departments. However according to studies conducted it was seen that the involvement of village communities in JFM was not adequate. It was felt that to create awareness and enhance decision-making in forest management, the communities have to be involved in systematic Participatory Forest Monitoring (PFM). PFM is a tool for adaptive forest management. Through simple standard field ecological methods PFM will be adapted. The traditional knowledge of the community will be combined with the scientific information gathered. The information gathered through PFM will be utilized in conservation and sustainable use of forest resources through protection and grazing practices and sustainable harvest of forest products.

To initiate the PFM process, a pilot study was conducted by ANCF under the Rufford Small Grants project with the following objectives:

• Building awareness among the village communities about Joint Forest Management (JFM)
• Conduct of Participatory Forest Monitoring (PFM) through simple scientific methods in 20 villages in Tumkur and Hassan districts of Karnataka, Southern India
• Draw adaptive management of forests based on PFM for conservation and sustainable use of forest resources.
• Institutionalization of PFM in JFM activities

Besides the above objectives a Documentary Film of the JFM process and Participatory Vegetation Monitoring and a Manual on Participatory Vegetation Monitoring were also produced and published.