What about the wild animals?

Community forestry aims to assist local people to improve their livelihoods by successfully managing their natural resources, particularly trees and forests, through forestry-related projects. Wildlife plays an important role in the lives of many of the people targeted by these projects. This document does not seek to make foresters or extensionists experts on wildlife. Rather, it seeks to raise issues and expand professional thinking on benefits from learning more about wildlife from local people. The study therefore tries to: (1) provide a framework for community forestry professionals to consider ways to integrate wild animal species into projects they manage or are proposing; (2) document ways in which humans interact with wild animal species in tropical settings; (3) provide a review of ways in which humans have managed animal species; and (4) propose ways that wild animal species could be successfully integrated into community forestry projects in the tropics.