ABSTRACT
Forests are one of the largest natural resource, the habitat of precious flora and fauna and many other organisms, nurturing soil-inhabiting organism along with maintaining soil quality and health, mitigating climate change and GHGs level in the atmosphere through the activity carbon storage and sequestration into vegetation and soils, respectively. Forests provide both tangible and intangible ecosystem services which help in sustaining the lives on the earth. Tangible (direct) benefits include both timber and non-timber forest products, whereas biodiversity conservation, watershed management, climate change mitigation, soil management, and livelihood security are regarded as intangible and indirect services from the forests. The activities like deforestation, faulty agricultural practices, overexploitation of NTFPs, etc., are destroying the valuable resources and ecosystem health through the release of several greenhouse gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere. In this context, sustainable forest management plays a vital role in productivity and health of forests and related forest products, which recognize an important source of income to the rural farmer and tribal people. Thus, effective policies and its implementation with good governance, scientific-based R&D, and building an effective roadmap for future strategies and scientific oriented programs are the good strategies for forest management.
