Non Timber Forest Products : Conservation Utilization and Management

Contents: Preface. Introduction to composition of the book/K.R. Dhiman, R. Bawa, K.K. Raina and N.P. Dohroo. I. Conservation: 2. Reincorporation of selected medicinal plants in forest ecosystems/R. Raina. 3. Conservation of non timber forest products/N.S. Chauhan. 4. Medicinal trees: their conservation and improvement/Sanjeev Thakur and Atul Gupta. 5. Nursery techniques of important temperate medicinal plants/Sandeep Sharma. 6. Breeding strategies for medicinal and aromatic plants/R. Raina and Shehkanta Bhandari. 7. Plant wealth in sacred groves of Himachal Pradesh/A. Rajasekaran. 8. Endangered Pinus gerardiana/M.K. Seth, R. Bawa, C.L. Thakur and H.P. Sankhyan. 10. Grewia optiva: an important fodder plant/H.P. Sankhyan, S.S. Bhat, S.S. Sharma and Atul Gupta. ...II. Utilization. III. Management. Non timber forest products are critical to rural subsistence livelihoods and make up significant local, regional, national and international markets. They provide communities with key substance resources and with a valuable means of generating cash income. NTFPs have long been invisible to or undervalue in the past by many policy makers, NGOs and scientific researchers. As a result, the economic significance of NTFPs is poorly documented and relatively little information exists concerning the conservation, utilization and management of even the most widely utilized species. There is however growing recognition of the important economic social and ecological values of NTFPs and the complementary roles they can play. NTFP harvests can lower impacts on forest ecosystems than other uses, provide a range of social and economic benefits to local groups and are potentially compatible with efforts to integrate the use and conservation of biodiversity. To manage the non timber forest products properly it is imperative to have a basic understanding of the biology and the ecology of the target species the site capabilities of the forest under management and the response of the target species to harvesting and other human and natural disturbances. In general when NTFPs are properly managed, they protect many forest services and cause less biotic impoverishment than other land uses. This observation, however, must be tampered by the sheer variety of non timber forest products and their production systems. The book is organized in to three different sections. The first part on conservation includes topics such as reincorporation of medicinal plants in forest ecosystems, conservation of important medicinal trees, nursery techniques of important temperate medicinal plants, breeding strategies, NTFP wealth in sacred groves, endangered species, population dynamics regeneration techniques role of diversity and importance of ferns, wild mushrooms, honey bee and other insect pollinators for biodiversity conservation domestication of lesser known wild fruits etc.