An Engaging Approach to Managing Non-Timber Forest Resources

It’s been many years since government and other stakeholders have attempted to develop and introduce some form of formal management for non-timber forest resources (NTFRs). The provincial government’s efforts in the 1990s through the Pine Mushroom Task Force failed to result in any action and a renewed effort in the early 2000’s to develop a series of pilot projects to test various management assumptions also ended in no action. While we did learn a great deal through those exercises, are we any further ahead in our knowledge about what to do to ensure the NTFR sector remains sustainable and vibrant, communities have alternative livelihood strategies, and the sector is not ignored amidst the current focus on various new goods and services associated with the emerging ‘bio-economy’? Government needs to understand how it can more effectively re-engage with the NTFR sector, provide the appropriate arrangements for access to the resource, and structure how the sector can contribute to or at least participate equally within the bio-economy.