Traditional forest management and its application to encourage public participation for sustainable forest management in the northern Zagros mountains of Kurdistan Province, Iran

For many years, the Iranian Forest Service has been implementing forest management plans in Zagros forests using a number of different approaches. These have met with limited success owing to conflicts of interest and expectations between the local communities and the forest service. This study, conducted in a village in Kurdistan Province, Iran, evaluated traditional forest management practices and their effects on stand structure to find ways to modify and apply these techniques for developing modified traditional forest co-management plans. Field data on traditional management practices and forest structure were collected using a participatory research approach. The results indicate that traditional forest management can offer sustained yield and can be prescribed for sustainable forest management in northern Zagros with some modifications.