Low on Funds, Forest Service Neglects Biodiversity

PORTLAND, Oregon, May 17, 2004 (ENS) - The U.S. Forest Service is failing to effectively manage forests for nontimber products, such as mushrooms, ginseng and other medicinal plants, floral greens and thousands of other wild forest species harvested from the nation's forests, scientists say.

They report loss of critical harvesting habitat and biological diversity, not from harvesting, but from logging, grazing, development, recreation and other forest uses.

Anthropologists Eric Jones and Kathryn Lynch with the nonpartisan nonprofit research organization the Institute for Culture and Ecology studied the relationship between biodiversity conservation, forest management, and nontimber forest products.

They traveled 37,000 miles across the lower 48 states interviewing hundreds of people who harvest nontimber forest products to gather the data for their study.

Jones and Lynch also surveyed U.S. Forest Service and state forestry managers to find out how they are managing forests for nontimber forest products.

Gathering forest products, an ancient human activity, continues to be of widespread commercial as well as noncommercial importance to urban and rural people throughout the country, the scientists report.

But poor management is taking its toll.

"A lot of my good 'seng' - ginseng - ground has been taken away when they go in and clearcut it," one harvester told the researchers. "It will take 50 years before anybody can find 'seng' back in there again."

The study finds the Forest Service has failed to properly assess the economic losses, the impacts to harvester livelihoods, and the consequences for biodiversity protection.

Inventorying and monitoring of nontimber forest products is minimal or non-existent, the researchers report.

The reason managers most commonly gave for not doing inventories and monitoring was lack of funding.

The scientists say that participatory inventory and monitoring programs that involve harvesters in data collection, similar to the Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count, offer one solution to the funding issue.

Given the lack of scientific nontimber forest products research, the many people who harvest these products part time or full time have the most knowledge about them, the study reports.

Efforts to conserve biodiversity are unlikely to succeed unless knowledge about these species and products, according to the report, and the effects on them of various forest management activities on harvesting nontimber forest products, becomes an integral part of forest management.