**2. Methods and materials**

#### **2.1 Study area**

JNP is a part of Himalayan Biodiversity Hotspot [15]. It is situated on the foothills of the eastern Himalayas, India [37]. The park is mainly savannah, containing giant grasses along with mixed deciduous, wet monsoon, tropical moist deciduous, tropical semievergreen, and riverine forests [38]. The region is subtropical, receiving average annual rainfall of 250–300 cm from south–west monsoon of which 80% is received from June to August. The summer and winter temperatures are mild with 34°C as the highest in the month of May, while the lowest temperature is 7.5°C in the month of January. The study area as measured by GPS (Germin- 72) was between 250 58' N and 27<sup>0</sup> 45' N latitudes and 89<sup>0</sup> 08<sup>0</sup> E and 89<sup>0</sup> 55<sup>0</sup> E longitudes with an elevation of 47 m above mean sea level.

The forest is inhabited by divergent Indo-Mongoloid communities of Mech, Ravas, Totos, Uraons, Tamang, Toppo, Lepcha, Rajbangsi, and Mundas, making it bioculturally diverse with varied socioeconomic conditions. These indigenous people are permanently settled in and around the national park. Each indigenous community has its own distinct culture and beliefs (www.alipuarduar.gov.in). The primary livelihood activity of these communities is subsistence farming and NTFP collection. Their standing crop is frequently decimated by wild elephants. Further, the habitations are remotely located and isolated with no physical infrastructure and facilities like limited accessibility by good roads, making the whole area underdeveloped. The inhabitants of the area thus depend on NTFPs to meet their income and daily needs. The forest resources are locally managed by Forest Protection Committees under the Joint Forest Management Scheme controlled by the State Forest Department [39].

### **2.2 Sampling procedure**

Multistage sampling procedures were applied in this study. JNP and the villages were selected purposively, while the respondents were selected randomly. The selection of the study area was purposive because it is a national park important for its rhinoceros conservation and inhabited by the indigenous communities depending on it for NTFP resources. The villages were located in the designated forest area and are termed as forest villages. The Indian Forest Act permits the inhabitants of these villages access and resource use rights over the collection of NTFPs from the park as the country is a signatory of the United Nation Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992 [40]. Major ten villages located in and around the national park that has more than 50 households were also selected purposively and from the each village; one tenth of the total households (205) were randomly selected [3].

#### **2.3 Data collection**

The data were collected from the sampled households by the lead author assisted by a trained enumerator with the help APRE-tested structured questionnaire through personal interviews and focus group discussions (FGD) guided by a checklist of questions [41–43]. The questionnaire was pretested for elimination, addition, and

alteration with non-sample respondents of the study area. In pretesting, care was taken not to include respondents who were selected as sample for final interview. On the basis of experiences in pretesting, appropriate changes in the construction of item and their sequence were made. Prior to starting the interviews, a few days were devoted in each selected village to establish rapport with the respondents. The questionnaire was administered to the respondent in the local language, and the responses were recorded in English. On the basis of the objectives of study, the questionnaire was designed with two sections. The first section was on socioeconomic attributes of the respondents like literacy, occupation, and total monthly household income, while the second section was on the collection and utilization including processing of NTFPs, value of NTFPs consumed and sold by the households, and contribution of NTFPs to total monthly household income.

Occupation indicates the economic activity of a household and thus is a source of income. We hypothesized that as our study villages are remotely located and isolated with no or very little basic infrastructure facilities, there will be limited or no livelihood options except dependency on forest resources or subsistence farming as was also reported in earlier studies [44]. The limitations of our study area mentioned above also led us to hypothesize that the inhabitants will be mostly illiterate and thus will have no other livelihood options except for relying on subsistence farming or on forest resources. Studies have shown that education results in lesser dependency on forest or farming activity and more inclination toward alternative employment opportunities [45]. Our last hypothesis was that the study area would have very low or marginal total household monthly income because of illiteracy and limited livelihood options rendering the inhabitants with no other livelihood options other than to depend on subsistence farming and NTFP collection from the forest [46].

Generally, the head of the household was taken as the respondent. The society of the study area is patriarchal, so the husband is the head of the family. In case when the husband is absent, the wife, eldest son, or the daughter was interviewed on behalf of the head. A total of 10 FGDs were conducted, one in each selected village. There were about 15–20 participants in the discussions, which included the village chief, senior citizens of the village, some prominent NTFP collectors, members of Forest protection committee, and representatives of the State Forest Department. The information gathered from these discussions supplemented the household surveys, which were finally used for interpretations of the results.

## **2.4 Data analysis**

Data collected were statistically analyzed using a descriptive technique (frequency, percent and bar chart). We classified our respondents as literates and illiterates. According to Indian standards, a person who has only basic "3Rs" knowledge, that is, can read and write his/her name and can perform simple arithmetic, is literate and otherwise not. Literacy of the respondents is expressed as per cent of the total respondents. Monthly total household income is calculated as the sum total of income a household was earning from different sources (if any). Generally, the total household income (THI) is the summation of agricultural (AI), nonagricultural (NAI), and forest income (FI) or THI = AI + NAI + FI [5]. The households were classified as low-, medium-, and high-income group [47] based on their total monthly household income and then expressed as per cent of the total respondents. USD to Indian rupee exchange rate during the study period was USD1 = INR60.

*Non-Timber Forest Products: Diversity, Utilization, and Dependency in Fringe Areas… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.113271*

#### **2.5 Relative frequency of citation (RFC)**

Relative frequency of citation (RFC) implies in this study to finding out the most collected NTFPs by the forest fringe people [48]. The RFC value is "0" when no one refers to the plant as being useful and "1" when all the participants refer to the plant as being useful. RFC is calculated as

$$\text{RFC} = \frac{FC}{N}$$

Where "FC" denotes the number of participants who mention the collection and use of the species, and N denotes the total number of participants.
