Lightening is more frequent in upper reaches and damages trees standing on ridges
Deodar and other conifers, hollowed out for extraction of torch wood or damaged due to fire are more susceptible to high velocity winds.

Timber

The Palas forests are currently managed under the Revised Working Plan for Palas Forests (RWP). Commercial timber harvesting is prescribed under the Forest Department's Working Plan for Palas Forests. Under the First Working Plan, harvesting was much lower than prescribed, apparently due to local disputes over forest ownership. And while substantial harvesting has taken place under the Revised Working Plan since 1988, most Palas forests remain as yet intact. However, in some areas, over-cutting has caused substantial degradation of the remaining resource, and high rates of deforestation elsewhere in Hazara give cause for concern in Palas.

The sale of timber rights is a simple way for forest owners to raise quick cash, analogous to the cashing in of shares. Private enterprises are only too ready to oblige with cash down-payments.

Unsustainable commercial timber harvesting is driven by external demand for timber, the rent-seeking activity of both state and private enterprise, and by socio-economic change. In regard to the latter, the resolution of long-standing tribal disputes over forest ownership, retention of forest shares by an increasing number of non-resident Palasis, increasing importance of income from wage labour relative to cash and subsistence income from NTFPs, increasing uncertainty of agricultural production (with declining maize seed quality, increasing pests and diseases and declining soil fertility due to the maize mono-culture) and the need for cash income (due to increasing bride-prices, the increasing sophistication and cost of weaponry, increases in the cost of living index and widespread poverty and debt) are some of the important factors which tend to increase the demand for income from commercial timber harvesting, while undermining any interest in sustainable use of the forest resource.

While non-owning forest users stand to lose most, the owning Shin also realise a small fraction of the value of their timber. The current harvesting system is very wasteful and out-turn is only 40-45%; and though 80% of this out-turn legally belongs to the forest owners in Palas, the advance sale of felling rights results in their receiving only c. 20% of the market price; consequently, they realise as little as (40 x 0.8 x 0.2 =) 5% of the value of their timber. The owners additionally miss out on income from the management and execution of timber harvesting, which is mostly done by outsiders, and miss out on the opportunity to develop their own forest processing industries. More seriously, the forests are often left in such poor condition that the potential for regeneration and sustained timber harvesting is greatly reduced.
The un-sustainability of commercial timber harvesting is further exacerbated by: the conflict between statutory and customary forest management regimes, reflected in the exclusion of local participation from forest planning and management, and the cursory attention given to domestic demands on forest resources given in the Working Plan; the inadequacy of existing forest planning and control measures; the failings of customary common property regimes and institutions in the face of socio-economic change; and conflict over forest ownership, which undermines cooperative action.