The Chepang are an indigenous Tibeto-Burman people group numbering around fifty-two thousand mainly inhabiting the rugged ridges of the Mahabharat mountain range of central Nepal. Over the past two or three generations the Chepang have begun to slowly shift from a semi-nomadic (slash-and-burn) lifestyle to a more settled way of life, relying increasingly upon the produce of permanent fields of maize, millet and bananas. The severe topography, however, has made permanent farming difficult (and usually insufficient) and the forest has remained an important (although decreasingly so) source of food for the Chepang. Historically, the collection of wild yams and tubers, fish caught from nearby rivers, bats and wild birds, and periodically wild deer hunted from nearby forests, have supplemented