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primarily for consumption and only a few people sold it. In terms of relativeimportance it is thus safe to say that for the majority firewood is very important.When it comes to poles and timber we recorded 15% of households either extracted itfor consumption (96%) or for commercial purposes (4%). Also here there is a certaindegree of regular use, especially for poles, as it is used mainly for building ormending houses. This is however not done on a regular basis and it can go yearsbefore the household needs to mend their houses with new poles. Therefore it isimportant to note that although we only recorded 15 % that recently had used poles,this just happened to be those who needed to build or mend their houses at thatparticular time. Timber on the other hand is extracted mostly for commercialpurposes, either in times of hardship or as a poverty reduction strategy. For the fewthat did it on a regular basis it could raise their income significantly (one individualsold for as much as $1372). Households with high human capital (younger householdheads; p = 0,043, and higher worker/consumer ratio; p = 0,039) tend to take morepoles and timber than other households. This can be explained by the heavy workloadassociated with such activities. As seen from table... significantly more poles andtimber are produced in Masugu (32%), compared to the other villages. We canthereby say that this activity is mostly seen in Masugu.17% of the households were involved in charcoal production. However, given the factthat most of the charcoal was sold (81%) the majority of these households would stillbe dependent on firewood to cover their personal energy needs. By doing tests we seethat there are significantly more wealthy households that are engaged in both charcoaland in poles/timber production within the study area. Similar to poles and timberhouseholds in Masugu are also engage more than the others in charcoal making(40%). We can therefore say that less poor households in Masugu, are the ones thatare most engaged in both charcoal and poles/timber activities.The reasons for why charcoal and poles and timber were that much more widespreadin Masugu than in Nyali and Lunenzi can be many, however one obvious reason is itscloseness to Kilosa Town which also makes it easily accessible from the mainhighway reaching Morogoro and Dar es Salaam (where much of the charcoal demandcomes from). In and around Masugu, we observed substantial charcoal as well as189