Horror turned to bemusement when the rear doors of the crashed ambulance, driven by a Pakistani soldier, swung open to reveal planks of sawn timber.

"We were surprised to see this in an ambulance, which is supposed to carry people wounded by shelling," said one of the villagers.

Kashmir is barely clinging on to some the world's most glorious forests, and soldiers, villagers, officials, and timber merchants are blamed for their depletion.

Cedar, pine, fir, and spruce trees once shrouded all Kashmir's peaks. Maple, walnut, ash, oak and willow trees blanketed its velvet valleys and alpine meadows, home to rare pheasants, black bears, ibex, musk deer, striped hyaena, lynx, and snow leopards.

But since 1947, when Pakistan was created for South Asia's Muslims, forest cover in Azad (free) Jammu Kashmir, the 13,300 square kilometer north-west strip of the region under Pakistani control, has diminished by two-thirds. Most of its slopes are bare.

"It's embarrassing. When we were divided in 1947, we had 42 percent of Azad Kashmir under forest. Today it's 13 percent," AJK President Sardar Anwar Khan, a retired major-general, told AFP.

"It's an environmental disaster."

Forests are vanishing "at an alarming rate," Farooq A. Niazi, head of the Jammu Kashmir Human Rights Movement, told AFP.

Disappearing with the forests is Kashmir's exotic wildlife. "There's not much left," Khan said.

They are also victims of incessant shelling along the heavily militarised 767 kilometer (476 mile) Line of Control (LoC) splitting the Himalayan region between Pakistan and India.

"Cross-border bombardment is damaging the forests and wildlife beyond imagination," Niazi said.

Pakistan and India, both claiming Kashmir in full, have fought two wars over it.

Last year 60,000 shells landed on the Pakistani side, killing 96 people and wounding 383, according to Pakistan's military.

"Shelling kills the living tissues of trees," AJK's chief forests conservationist Sardar Farooq said.

The 1999 fighting over Kargil in northern Kashmir took its toll on the fauna.

"More than 100 wild deer, found only in the Indian-held side, were nowhere to be seen after Kargil. The number of snow leopards shrunk from 80 to 20," he said.

"Migratory birds, which would come to Kashmir from Siberia, have changed their routes.

Pakistani and Indian soldiers alike are involved in illegal logging, rights groups and government officials say.

"Pakistan army personnel cut trees to use as fuel. They smuggle sawn wood. So do Indian army men on the other side," Niazi said.

Forestry officials checking vehicles for smuggled timber, especially "precious" cedar and walnut wood, are not allowed to check army trucks, an AJK official said.

"Army vehicles dont permit forestry officials to search them on the pretext of transporting weapons," the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Military spokesman Major General Rashid Qureshi denied any felling by soldiers.

"I don't know of any incident where a soldier has cut trees or tried to smuggle. By and large it's the civilian population which cuts trees for fuel.

The army prevents this from happening," he told AFP.

President Khan blames "timber mafia" and compliant authorities.

"There is lots of connivance by local forestry officials," he said.

Some 25 percent of AJK's forest are zoned commercial, providing up to 60 percent of its revenue and 2,800 jobs. They too have shrunk, by one third, since 1947.

Institutionally the army is doing its bit for reforestation, planting more than 30,000 saplings in 2002, according to conservationists WWF Pakistan.

AJK villagers, angry at the depletion of their forests, have tried to prevent illegal felling, Niazi said.

"But they cannot forbid the army."

Frustration was inclining many towards independence rather than rule by either Pakistan or India, Niazi said.

"People in Kashmir feel that if the two countries have to fight, they should fight at Wagah," the official crossing on the internationally-recognised border.

"At Wagah they trade with each other, while we Kashmiris have been left to face their bullets."

SPACE.WIRE