Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
The forests bear the carbon Amogh Rai is standing on a small patch of wooded hillside, his Android phone held up above him, taking in the canopies of the trees that rise up around us. There's a problem though. It's a winter's day in the northern Indian foothills of the Himalayas, and the sun isn't breaking through the clouds with its usual clarity. Rai is using an app on his phone to help him understand the canopy's interception of light, but a layer of haze is preventing the 27-year-old Indian from collecting any meaningful data. Around him are some other tools of the trade: a portable device known as a ceptometer, used for measuring leaf area index British officials used the excuse that local practices were environmentally destructive to defend the regulation of vast areas of forest. Nearly half the land in Kumaon was taken over by the forest department which, by the beginning of the 20th century, was endeavouring to protect land from fire as well as clamp down on cattle grazing and fodder harvests. In response to the regulations and reclassifications landing on them, villagers broke the rules. Fodder and fuel was extracted, livestock was grazed. British forest officers were fed misinformation like a fire is fed wood. What is happening here may resemble a comedy of elemental errors, but it has significance far beyond the mountainous forests of Kumaon, one of two regions in the state of Uttarakhand. Rai is working with a number of other ecologists and field assistants on the pithily titled research project, Long-term Monitoring of Biomass Stocks and Forest Community Structures in Temperate Zone of Western Himalaya. Understanding the basic mechanism of carbon sequestration and the level of human disturbance in these forests can then provide the framework for a plan that seeks to pay local people to maintain the forests. If the project can determine how much human interaction with the forest has affected the trees' ability to photosynthesise, then local people can be paid to preserve the forest. Otherwise, its ability to act as a 'carbon sink' (anything that absorbs more carbon than it releases) risks damage from overuse. Right now, the forests of Kumaon are used primarily for fodder and fuel. Traditionally, families in the area had as many as 15 or 20 cows of their own. These cows were particularly dependent on the forest leaves for fodder and bedding. The fewer leaves a tree has, the less able it is to photosynthesise properly. Today, there are far fewer cows in the area and so fodder use has come down by a multiple of four or five in the last 10 years. The market has come to Kumaon – once an isolated area – and artificial substitutes for fodder are now available to buy locally, with NGOs providing subsidies for this. – were created to manage the forests of Kumaon. Villagers could once again use their land the way they saw fit, free from the commercial priorities of the colonial government. This new plan to preserve the forests of the region in the 21st century is also being met with accusations of imperialism. But while the pressure on the forest to provide fodder has come down, the need for it to provide fuel has gone up. This is in the Himalayan foothills, after all, and it gets cold in winter. There is little central heating and so a serious amount of wood is needed for fires to heat houses and light stoves. Where extended families once lived together, with grandparents, parents and children all under one roof, now the nuclear family is becoming the norm, meaning that requirement for fuel has gone up. And if the people of Kumaon are to use the forest less, they need compensation, or they will have no fire to warm them through the winter months. Substitutes for wood are available but are unaffordable for most. So the challenge for this project mirrors the challenge faced by climate change scientists and policymakers across the world: how can you reduce fossil fuel emissions and maintain and improve carbon sinks without disrupting or destroying the lives of local people, many of whom will be those most affected by climate change? Last March, US science agency the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released figures that showed record concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, at over 400 parts per million (ppm). These levels are unprecedented in over a million years and have caused over one degree of warming. The level considered 'safe' – 350 ppm – was exceeded nearly three decades ago. Today's carbon concentrations represent a more than 40 per cent increase on those found in the atmosphere in the middle of the 18th century, before the beginning of the industrial revolution. Forests are an important part of this increase. They are, along with the planet's oceans, one of two major carbon sinks. Deforestation puts carbon into the atmosphere while at the same time removing that sink. "You can say that one quarter of this increase in carbon concentrations since the 18th century has been caused by deforestation," says Corinne Le Quéré, author of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a professor of climate change science and policy at the University of East Anglia. In 2014, the IPCC found that 11 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions were caused by forestry and other land use. Other sources claim this figure is anything up to 30 per cent. While Le Quéré points out that the effect of deforestation was more pronounced in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was a key driver in the process of industrialisation, she emphasises the ongoing importance of forests in the fight for a better environment. "We have very big ambitions to limit climate change well below two degrees… In terms of delivering a policy to achieve this, you absolutely need to have your forest in place and you absolutely need to tackle deforestation, because you cannot reach that level of climate stabilisation without it. Reforestation and afforestation is one of the best ways to take CO2 out of the atmosphere and forests have so many additional benefits for cleaning the air, cleaning the water, and so on." Kumaon's unique elements appealed to Rai. The area has two main types of oak tree, a number of pines, rhododendrons, cedars and maples. There are leopards, porcupines, wild boars, a variety of snakes and rodents, and 200 species of butterfly. The forests grow down hillsides into valleys and up along plateaus. There are now 40 forest plots in Kumaon, and the hope is that in the next couple of years that total will rise to 100. One night, I join Amogh Rai for dinner at the house of one of his two field assistants, Narendra. Now in his forties, Narendra is from Kumaon and has three small children. He doesn’t earn much but he is given supplementary income when he needs it and owns a small amount of land in the area. In a room furnished only with a single bed, we sit on the floor and eat food grown in the local fields: daikon, tomatoes sprinkled with marijuana ("Yes, dude, welcome to the Himalayas," laughs Rai), nettles, smoked chilli and bread. Having left school at 17, Narendra tells me he worked in a Nestlé factory and then as a mechanic, before realising that he'd rather be back in the rural village he came from. Haldwani, the nearby town he was working in, was too hot and he just loved the forest too much. This was in the 1990s, when Kumaon was a particularly remote part of the country. It still is, comparatively speaking, but the arrival of mobile phones, satellite technology and the expansion of the road network has changed the area. The population has grown and rich professionals from the city have begun to build second homes in Kumaon, drawn to the area, like the British before them, by the promise of peace and tranquillity in the mountains, by the chance to get away from it all.

<question>:
Why is Kumaon a good region for potential forest preservation?

<options>:
A There is a rich history of environmentalism
B It is very bio-diverse
C All of the other choices are correct
D It has a large area of forest

<answer>:

C