Pulwama, Feb. 28 -- Every morning before workers arrive, Feroz Ahmad Bhat walks into his tin-roofed pencil-slate unit in Oukhoo village and counts the poplar logs stacked along the wall. Bhat does not use a ledger. Instead, he runs his palm across the pale trunks, silently calculating how many days of work remain.

"Earlier, this yard would be full of poplar wood but these days, the logs arrive less frequently," he says, glancing at the empty stretch beside his shed. "Now we measure wood carefully."

The anxiety reflects a larger shift unfolding in Kashmir's Pulwama district, which produces nearly 90% of India's pencil slats. A shortage of poplar wood, driven by large-scale tree felling during the pandemic and weak replantation since, is ...