Open Journal of Forestry, 2020, 10, 388-400 https://www.scirp.org/journal/ojf ISSN Online: 2163-0437 ISSN Print: 2163-0429 DOI: 10.4236/ojf.2020.104024 Sep. 16, 2020 388 Open Journal of Forestry Evaluating Contribution of Trees Outside Forests for Income of Rural Livelihoods of Terai Region of Nepal Yogendra Yadav 1,2* , Bir Bahadur Khanal Chhetri 3 , Santosh Raymajhi 3 , Krishna Raj Tiwari 3 , Bishal K. Sitaula 4 1 Office of the Dean, Institute of Forestry, Tribhuvan University, Pokhara, Nepal 2 Institute of Forestry, Tribhuvan University, Hetauda Campus, Hetauda, Nepal 3 Institute of Forestry, Tribhuvan University, Pokhara Campus, Pokhara, Nepal 4 Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway Abstract Trees Outside Forests (TOF) is a reliable source of income for farmers in ru- ral area but study regarding this has not been explored in depth yet. There- fore, this study was objectively conducted to assess the contribution of in- come from TOF products in annual income of rural household. Dhangadimai Municipality of Siraha district, Nepal was selected as study site. Altogether, 300 household surveys and 20 Focus Group Discussions (FGD) were con- ducted to find the income sources and their contribution including TOF. The descriptive analysis and unitary method were applied to analyze the collected data. The off-farm income was US$ 1802.57 in total per household. Among it, the highest income was from remittance around US$ 762.34 (42.29%) and the lowest from government job around US$ 166.68 (9.25%). The farm based to- tal annual income per household was US$ 685.94 on which, the highest in- come was US$ 220.28 (32.11%) from grains and the lowest income was US$ 0.04 from ploughing other farmers’ field. The total value of livestock of average household was US$ 805.99 and out of this, the highest value was of buffalo i.e. US$ 333.01. At the same time, annual income from TOF product was about US$ 853.31 in total per household. Out of this, the highest income was approximately US$ 521.90 (61.16%) from fruits followed by US$ 214.77 (25.17%) from selling of timber. The highest net income per household was US$ 448.66 respectively from selling timber by rich family while US$ 233.78 for medium family. In addition, the net income from selling fruit by rich, medium and poor family was US$ 427.82, 550.71, and 382.43 respectively. Specifically, the total contribution of income only from TOF product was How to cite this paper: Yadav, Y., Chhetri, B. B. K., Raymajhi, S., Tiwari, K. R., & Sitaula, B. K. (2020). Evaluating Contribu- tion of Trees Outside Forests for Income of Rural Livelihoods of Terai Region of Nepal. Open Journal of Forestry, 10, 388-400. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojf.2020.104024 Received: August 7, 2020 Accepted: September 13, 2020 Published: September 16, 2020 Copyright © 2020 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access