Chapter 7 - Policies and regulations concerning non-timber forest products

The United States regulatory landscape for managing nontimber forest products (NTFPs) is as complex as the broad spectrum of harvesters, consumers, species, and products that make up this category. This overview briefy highlights some of the important historical foundations of United States natural resource laws and introduces more recent concepts and attitudes to management and resource access that are affecting current approaches toward regulation of NTFPs in the United States, which are discussed in this chapter. For a more in-depth discussion of the evolving relationships between people, policies, and NTFPs in the United States and in the global context, see Emery and McLain (2001), Jones et al. (2002), Laird et al. (2010), and Shackleton et al. (2011).