Assessment, Conservation and Sustainable Use of Forest Biodiversity

Assessment, Conservation and Sustainable Use of Forest Biodiversity
According to CATIE´s proposal, the sustainable management of NTFP from wild population should include
indicators such as: quantity of product to harvest in the management unit; harvesting cycles by species; the
effect of different types of human intervention, as well as environmental factors, on the wild population and
the harvesting cycle; and population dynamics. The forest management plan should be the instrument in
which this information is integrated in practice.
Theoretically, the management plan may be diversified (for various species or various kinds of product from
the same management unit); in any case criteria for silvicultural management of the different species included
in the management plan are required. In the case of NTFP, the wide range of situations derived from market –
product – growth pattern combinations represent a critical issue to be considered.
The same kind of product (e.g. a medicine) may be obtained from:
• a similar kind of vegetative organ but from plants with different growth habits (e.g. the bark of
Simarouba amara trees, or the bark of the vine Uncaria tomentosa);
• plants with the same growth habit but from different organs (the stem of the vine Bauhinia
guianensis or the root of the vine Smilax chiriquensis);
• different organs of plants with different growth habit (the fruits of the herb Solanum mamosum or
the branches of the shrub Quassia amara) (Villalobos 2001).
Several lessons have been learnt from the analysis of this problem:
• although the general principles for the management of a particular plant are the same, the specific
tools for implementation must be developed for each species individually;
• the development of those tools requires some investment;
• the management tools depend on the definition of the kind of product to obtain from the forest;
• in most cases the needs of people mean that harvesting can not be put off, so the silvicultural tools
must be developed in an adaptive fashion as a part of the management and production process;
• to reduce the investment risk it is important to guarantee an adequate selection of the species
to include in the diversified management plan
The first step to develop management criteria for a NTFP species, according to the CATIE approach, is the
definition of the product, since a basic sustainability principle is to avoid unnecessary extraction or waste of
the species being harvested. There are several examples of enterprises that have collapsed due to the lack of
quality control of the product (the goal should be to guarantee the maximum sustainable supply of the
product required by the market).
Product definition depends on the industry or market goal (fibre quality, active chemical principles,
nutritional quality, appearance). A productive individual is one capable to provide the product required for
the market; the forest manager should determine if the product required by the market is possible to produce
in a particular management unit.
The subsequent step, developing the management criteria, corresponds to the definition of the production
system, and for this the definition of silvicultural tools is necessary. These tools should allow the identification
of the productive individuals, the measurement of how much product could be obtained from one individual
or group of individuals, the definition of growth and development categories for the species and the
differentiation of kinds of individuals with respect to maturity and productivity and the ecological factors
related to these growth and development categories.
Basic knowledge which is required includes that on ethnobotany, biology and economy related to the species
and its products. With regard to management, the determination of variables which differentiate growth
stages, and the biological factors affecting these variables that should be studied during the development of
management criteria, should be attempted.
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