Threat of Ecological Disaster Sri Madhava Ashish This paper sets out to demonstrate how the present practices of agriculture in the Kumaon Himalayas is unavoidably implicated in giving rise to deforestation over extensive mountain tracts. If traditional farming and grazing practices are allowed to continue in the Kumaon tracts, not only will the hill populations destroy the hill environment on which their own livelihood depends and be forced to migrate to the plains, but the damage caused to plains agriculture by alternating floods and droughts, silting, and possible climatic changes wilt endanger the livelihood of the whole nation.