of logs if river levels fall.  Ironically, the foresters who express concern over the loss of forest 

land by conversion continue to support existing regulations without giving adequate 

consideration to the additional production costs and impacts.  Again, these costs would be 

heavy burdens for local communities to bear because they cannot support personnel to deal 

with high levels of bureaucracy.  Logging small timber volumes would not provide the revenue 

streams required to support these costs.  Consequently, the results are land conversion and 

illegal logging; both options may provide higher net returns than would compliance with the 

current system. 

The NRMP response to constraints produced by negotiation and production costs was to 

promote  simplified outcome based community forest management  (NRMP Report No. 51).  

Working with forestry officials, NRMP advisors recommended developing an outcome based 

system for community forest regulation.  The focus on community forestry was intended to 

provide disadvantaged groups with more immediate economic gains and to provide forestry 

officials and concession managers with an opportunity to learn what outcome management 

would entail.  Impacts are unavoidable if a forest is to be logged.  Levels of disturbance must be 

maintained within limits of ecological resiliency and forest recovery over reasonable periods.  

Sustainable forest management requires that these impacts be kept below maximum 

acceptable levels of change to avoid irreversible disruption of ecological processes.  These 

impact thresholds become the indicators of sustainable forest management.  Managing forests 

within several key thresholds that represent complex ecosystem dynamics supports sustainable 

forest management in the following ways (NRMP Report No. 51): 

Simplicity (an essential benefit to community forest managers) 

Adaptability (to enable forest managers to adapt to site conditions) 

Innovation and efficiency (allows managers to improve efficiency through decision 

making) 

Maximize economic value (by enabling all the economically valuable wood to be 

extracted up to the thresholds) 

Lower cost compliance (due to reduced burden on local forestry enforcement 

agencies) 

Outcome orientation (developed in forest users community, increased awareness of 

impacts). 

Suggested impact thresholds include five core indicators for which realistic outcome thresholds 

could be set (NRMP Report No. 51): 

Damage to residual stands 

Site disturbance (soil displacement and compaction) 

Canopy cover (area and dispersion) 

Commercial trees (composition and density) 

Hydrological system (flow and sedimentation).  

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