Community forestry (CF)

• Community forestry defined by the Forestry Act (1993) is a ‘national forest handed over to a user’s group under specified rules and regulation for its development, conservation, and utilization for collective benefits’.
• In the CF program, the management responsibility of the forest is transferred to the local people for sustainable use of forest resources which aims to overcome ecological and resource crises.

Sustainable management of NTFP

• To achieve a balance between conservation and sustainable use of NTFRs, and animals hunted for bush meat, there is a need to consolidate area networks establish and maintain corridors.s
• Ecosystem-level planning and the management of harvested or hunted populations must take place through a process of consultation, which takes relevant scientific, local indigenous knowledge into account.
• Land-use planning and setting of infrastructure (roads, and new settlements) both need to take protected areas, their adjacent conservancies of co-management areas, and the requirements for maintaining viable populations of valued, but vulnerable species taken into account.
• Sustainable levels of harvest of popular, less resilient plant and animal species need to be established and monitored as part of an adaptive management process with the partnership of related stakeholders.
• Appropriate and economically viable monitoring systems should be developed and established at the landscape level (remote sensing, aerial photograph analysis) and local level (indicator species)
• Integrated NTFR using forest inventory and management
• Conservation through cultivation or farming of wildlife which is economically viable and on a sufficient scale to take the pressure off wild stock in-situ conservation or farm condition)
• Ex-situ conservation needs to be implemented for some high-value, highly vulnerable species