For which there are many good answers. To register as a legal entity, CFUGs have to formulate a constitution and operational plan that specifies how the community will protect their forests, utilise and sell its products, and punish violators. Once approved by the District Forest Office (DFO), CFUGs have full sovereignty — short of land ownership — over the forests handed over to them. But the government continues to impose explicit and implicit restrictions to the commercial sale of timber from community forests, recently even venturing to reclaim their relinquished rights. The volume of timber that a user group is allowed to harvest every year — known as the annual allowable cut — is determined by forest growth estimates, which are already conservatively defined. The DFO then sets how much of that annual production can be cut — sometimes 75 per cent of healthy stands, and less for frailer forests.