ABSTRACT
Forests are about trees, but forestry is only incidentally about trees: it is essentially about people. Clearly there are major differences between the two and often conflicts arise between the desire to use the forest as a commercial resource and the use of such land for domestic purposes – timber, fuelwood, fodder, medicine and spiritual health. Whether one is considering such differences in the perception of environmental change or of the forest resource itself, there are going to be major policy implications regarding management and these will be different, if complementary, at local, regional and national scales. Unfortunately, the consequences of management rarely show a simple cause-effect relationship, and predicted changes rarely match reality.
