KATHMANDU — When the monsoon arrives in Jhumlabang village in Nepal’s far west, 35-year-old Til Kumari B.K. spends hours in the community forest harvesting mushrooms. The rest of the year, she goes there to collect bark from the allo plant (Girardinia diversifolia), or Himalayan nettle, which is processed into a fiber for weaving fabric. During the dry season, Til Kumari also tends her farm. “The farm feeds my family, while money from the mushrooms and fibers help pay for books and pens for my four children,” she says. But all that could soon change, with her once sleepy village now in the headlines as home to Nepal’s “biggest iron deposit.” The area, which once provided copper ores for community use, now sits on a potential iron deposit. There’s no full-scale mining operation here, for no

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