In the late 1980s, the forest department decided to cut down these regenerating trees and started planting commercially useful fast-growing species. The department also imposed restrictions on the access of villagers to these resources. Due to these rules enforced by the FD, people terminated their series of efforts towards forest protection and were compelled to steal fuelwood from the area that they preserved. The intervention of the FD resulted in resource exploitation of the forest area. Later on the Sova villagers, along with the help of four other villages, moved on to offering protection to another patch of forest, which was beyond the legal demarcations of a reserved forest (RF).
In 1993-94 despite the opposition raised by local NGOs, the government started joint forest management (JFM) in these forests. The advent of JFM meant an introduction of a formal institution in the village and an inflow of external funds. However this adulterated the entire concept of conservation and led to several conflicts, eventually leading to the murder of one of the community leaders. However, to date the community continues to protect the forest with their traditional guards and a good part of the hills have been regenerated. People now have increased access to firewood, fodder and resources for domestic use. The JFM programme has managed to sustain village conflicts amid a politicised atmosphere. In the second phase of the World Bank project—the community forest management (CFM) programme—these villages were denied extension of the benefits under the second phase for being critical of the project and highlighting the violations to the World Bank. Villagers consider this a very vindictive reaction of the department.