Natural management of tropical moist forests: silvicultural and management of sustained utilization.
In the keynote address on problems and prospects for natural management of tropical moist forests, J. WYATT-SMITH discusses data availability, forests rights, illegal clearing, extraction damage, training, management, market demand for timber, and conservation. Opportunity and skills must be developed to provide sufficient artificial regeneration/enrichment planting to cover future industrial production needs, and natural management should be pursued on all other forest land. Political and social factors will probably be more critical than technological ones. Consideration of silvicultural systems is made by HON TAT TANG (Problems and strategies for regenerating dipterocarp forests in Malaysia); P. K. ASABERE (Sustained yield management in the tropical high forests of Ghana); L. C. NWOBOSHI (Regeneration success of natural management, enrichment planting and plantations of native species in West Africa); and F. H. WADSWORTH (Applicability of Asian and African silviculture systems to naturally regenerated forests of the Neotropics). Silvicultural treatments are reviewed by I. D. HUTCHINSON (Improvement thinning in natural tropical forests) and M. S. PHILIP (Obstacles to measuring growth and yield in tropical rain forests). Economic, social and political aspects are noted by P. R. O. KIO & S. A. EKWEBELAM (Plantations versus natural forests for meeting Nigeria's wood needs) and A. J. LESLIE (Economic feasibility of natural management of tropical forests). -P.J.Jarvis
