Recreation and Nontimber Forest Products

Research on forest recreation over the last 60 years has been voluminous. Research on nontimber forest products (NTFP) has been much less voluminous. In this chapter the history of these two tracks of research has been reviewed. Not all studies are mentioned; rather, a representative selection of the subject matter is discussed. Forest recreation research had its beginnings in the late 1950s within a few southern universities and with two Federal Agencies—the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the Economic Research Service. In these beginnings the challenge was to shed more light on who recreates, where recreation occurs, what impacts it has on the resource, and whether recreation and tourism is one way to address persistent poverty in some areas of the South. Through the 1960s and 1970s, research expanded tremendously, with greater participation among universities and public agencies. Not only were practical problems being addressed, but also advances in theory and methods were being forged as the science of forest recreation matured. Through the 1980s and 1990s, many topics of management concern and of scientific concern were addressed as outlets for recreation and leisure sciences grew and the needs for scientific information for recreation management expanded. This recreation research is reviewed in brief in the chapter that follows, as is research on NTFPs. INTRODUCTION Unlike recreation research, the study of nontimber forest products (NTFP) is a relatively new topic in forestry in the South. The products of concern are forest plant materials that may include fungi, mosses, lichens, herbs, vines, shrubs, trees, or parts thereof. Only a modest amount of research dealing with NTFPs has been undertaken over the last 50 years. Most of this research has focused on describing the varied uses of the plants, their site requirements, and other botanical factors. Until very recently, within the last decade, NTFPs were not well recognized as a management concern or as a recreational or commercial pursuit. Much of the early research focused on defining and understanding how people used these products. Currently, more university and agency scientists are looking at NTFPs from management, recreational, commercial, and ecological impact perspectives. This chapter covers research over the last five decades in the South regarding two related but mostly distinct forest uses. The first is forest recreation. The focus is to overview the research applied to understanding recreation in forest settings. The author listed first for this chapter is principally responsible for the text covering forest recreation, which, because of the vast volume of this research, is limited to brief overviews of what has been accomplished. The second topic is gathering and using NTFPs. These products are mostly plant based and do not include lumber or pulpwood. While gathering forest products is often recreational, it is different than almost all other recreational activities in that it involves removal of natural materials. The second author is principally responsible for covering research on this topic. 1 Senior Scientist and Scientist, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Southern Research Station, Athens, GA 30602, and Blacksburg, VA 24060, respectively. So ut he rn F or es t Sc ie nc e: Pa st , P re se nt , a nd F ut ur e So ci oe co no m ic 254 Historical Overview of Outdoor Recreation Research Prior to the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission (ORRRC), which started its work in 1958 and published its results in 1962, very little forest recreation research had been done anywhere in the country, especially in the South. In fact, prior to World War II, there was little policy or management emphasis, let alone research, applied to recreational uses of forest lands, public or private. As demand for outdoor recreation grew after the war years, however, and as the U.S. economy rebounded from the war’s impacts, participating in outdoor activities and taking outdoor-oriented family vacations grew rapidly. That growth sparked creation of the ORRRC and drew national attention to the need for research to better understand the implications of this fast-growing phenomenon. As of the end of 1962, there were six known outdoor recreation research studies in progress by university faculty and graduate students in the South. At that time, a number of university park and recreation administration academic departments were creating outdoor recreation curricula throughout the region. Examples included Clemson University, North Carolina State University, the University of Arkansas, and Texas Agricultural and Mechanical University. The national visibility of the ORRRC reports gave energy and justification to these emerging programs and to building research capacity within some of them. In these early years, outdoor recreation research was underway at the University of Florida, University of Arkansas, University of Georgia, and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. The topics ranged from income earning potentials of outdoor recreation in rural areas to management evaluations of national forests and to recreation use estimation procedures (Graves 1963). As with the universities in the South, Government agencies were just beginning to institute recreation research programs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (Forest Service) and Economic Research Service were early to establish recreation research programs in the South (van der Smissen 1963) and elsewhere in the country. The few scattered publications beginning to emerge from the Forest Service, primarily the Southeastern Forest Experiment Station (SEFES) with headquarters in Asheville, NC, covered use impacts on developed recreation sites, hunting and fishing use, private land access issues, and how to include recreation in forest management planning. There were two Forest Service research locations in the South. The principal one was located in Asheville, NC, and had as its primary objectives the development of methods for measuring and predicting recreation use, mitigating use impacts, and assessing aesthetic values in forest environs. A second was located in Raleigh, NC, and affiliated with the School of Forestry at North Carolina State University. Its mission was to study outdoor recreation issues on industrial and nonindustrial private land. Research of this period by the Economic Research Service in the South was primarily focused on examining the potential for earning income from rural outdoor recreation development, including forest recreation. The issue driving this work was the prevalence of low-income communities and poverty in some areas in the region. Historical Overview of NTFP Research Research on NTFPs is a new topic in forestry in the South. The products of concern are typically defined as plant materials harvested from forests and may include fungi, mosses, lichens, herbs, vines, shrubs, trees, or parts thereof. Many plant parts are harvested, including the roots, tubers, leaves, bark, twigs, branches, fruit, sap, and resin, in addition to the wood. Until very recently, within the last decade, NTFPs were not recognized as natural resources being harvested from the forests. Historically, the primary focus of research on these products has been on human use, botanical identification, taxonomy, and ecological distribution. Much of the early research focused on defining and understanding how people used these products. The long history of using nontimber products gathered from the forests of southern Appalachia is not reflected in the scientific knowledge base. Native Americans used forest plants as tools, food, medicine, and religious ceremonial implements. They used bark for housing, branches and stems for utensils and tools, and wood for containers and other household products. Plants and plant products were fully integrated into and essential to their personal lives. Much of the knowledge gained from Native Americans is the foundation of the herbal medicinal industry today in the United States (Ody 1993). Over the course of three centuries, more than 400 medicinal forest products used by the Cherokee have been documented (Hamel and Chiltoskey 1975). This traditional knowledge was shared with early European settlers, who used the products for personal use, as well as in commercial trading.