Managing Non-Timber Forest Products and Commercialisation Opportunities:

Managing Non-Timber Forest Products and Commercialisation Opportunities:
Experiences from South Africa and Australia

12th June 2008

Footprints Student Lodge Conference Centre, Faculty Close, by James Cook University, Cairns

Please see attached a short description of the workshop. An agenda and list of speakers will be sent to you shortly.

Please RSVP to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Also let us know if you have any suggestions of other people who might like to come.

We look forward to hearing from you.
James Butler and Isla Grundy.

Non-timber forest products are an important source of food and materials for communities in South Africa and Australia. Access to these resources provides communities with important nutrition, cultural fulfilment and livelihood strategies. For example, the cultivation and commercial sale of ‘bush tucker’ species provides a potential alternative source of revenue for impoverished communities, with the added benefit of maintaining cultural practices related to the collection and management of these resources.

Since the transition to democracy in South Africa in 1994 community access to non-timber forest products has been revised and restored. This has provided interesting models of community co-management of protected areas, and potential commercialisation of bush tucker for livelihood benefit.

Indigenous communities of the Wet Tropics of Queensland, Australia, have a long history of utilising the landscape. The revival of these traditional approaches may provide opportunities for improving the well-being of communities, for example through bush tucker enterprises, access to cultural sites and the practice of traditional forms of resource management. However, the opportunities for the commercialisation of non-timber forest products have not been fully explored in the Wet Tropics.

In June 2008 Dr Coert Geldenhuys and Div de Villiers will be coming to Cairns from South Africa to visit CSIRO and James Cook University. Both are researchers with significant experience of managing non-timber forest product systems which will be of interest to local Australian stakeholders. Hence the purpose of this workshop is to:

1.    Learn from experiences in South Africa of managing non-timber forest product utilisation and commercialisation;
2.    Make comparisons with experiences in Australia;
3.    Consider the opportunities and limitations for introducing similar arrangements in the Wet Tropics;
4.    Form a network of researchers, communities and practitioners involved with non-timber forest product management in Australia and South Africa

The workshop is being organised through the Australian Tropical Forest Institute, James Cook University, Cairns, by Dr Isla Grundy and Dr James Butler (CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems, Cairns), and will involve visits by practitioners from South Africa and Australia.