Topic 1.2: Roles of Tropical Forest Managers

Foresters seldom decide the fates of forests. Whether a forest is logged without concern for future harvests, cleared for growing food crops, or converted into an industrial oil palm plantation is decided by landless farmers or rich investors, generally not by professional foresters.  Although foresters may have the best interests of society in mind, they often fail to protect forests due to their lack of political influence and their failure to adequately communicate the values of forests and forest management.  Often the challenge becomes one of demonstrating that forest maintenance is a more lucrative land-use option than forest conversion.  To do this convincingly, we foresters need to work with economists and to learn some economics ourselves. To help with this life-long process of carrying out cost-benefit analyses of all silvicultural recommendations, approximate labor and material costs of different treatments will be presented in the text whenever possible.

The profit motive drives most forest management decisions. Although this fact needs to be kept in mind by silviculturalists at all times, it does not mean that long-term forest functioning should be sacrificed for short-term financial profits.  It does mean, however, that silviculturalists need to develop a balanced perspective about the roles of forests and forestry, especially given the intense pressure on them throughout the world.  Finally, given the rate at which societal demands on forests and forestry are changing, silvicultural recommendations need to be made in full recognition of their need to change as we learn more.  Managers also need to be flexible and continue to learn and change while they help other people to understand and appreciate the forests for which they are responsible.

It may have seemed odd that the word “art” was used in the definition of natural forest management presented at the beginning of this chapter.  Hopefully, after this brief introduction to the variety of factors that managers need to consider, this word choice makes more sense.  Add to the variety of contextual factors to which the silviculturalist has to be responsive the fantastic diversity of species and the wide range of stand conditions encountered in the tropics, and the task of natural forest management may seem overwhelming, but hopefully the rest of this book will serve to reduce anxiety.