I n India, forest evaluation is an emergent practice. And those that have done so have realised its immense utility: the benefits from Himachal Pradesh's (hp's) forests, Verma's evaluation shows, are 2.61 times the value of the growing stock, 980 times the total expenditure incurred by the state's forestry sector and 2,607 times the revenue realised by the forests annually. Armed with this knowledge, in 2002