PARENT SESSION
Oral Session #107: Forest Ecology: Disturbance.
Presiding: H. Regan
Friday, August 9. 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Mesquite Room, Radisson.

Ecology, economy, people and trees: Conservation and the case of a non-timber resource in Mexico.

LINDQUIST, CYNTHIA^*,1, ¹ University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona

ABSTRACT- Conservationists and development specialists are promoting the use of non-timber forest products (NTFP's) to provide sustainable income to forest dwellers while preventing deforestation of tropical forests. This strategy is hampered by lack of long-term joint ecological, socioeconomic and political studies necessary to fully understand resource use. The most pressing question for NTFP proponents is whether resources will eventually be overharvested in response to political and economic pressure, and secondarily if methods of harvest disturb the ecology of the forest. I addressed these questions in a multifaceted investigation of Croton fantzianus Seymour (Euphorbiaceae), or "vara blanca", a tree in the tropical deciduous forest of Sonora, Mexico. Harvested as stakes for agricultural fields in Sinaloa, Sonora and Baja California for forty years, it is economically important regionally and locally. I gathered economic data through interviews and government documents, and performed vegetation studies on five sites using the point-centered quarter method. Size class data was collected. C. fantzianus has the highest Importance Value on all sites with varying population structure and composition, possibly related to prior harvesting practices. Two sites compared before and after extraction indicate a decline in species density and basal area and a diminished reproductive capacity of vara. Low mean densities found on private ranches are effects of disturbance. High rates of harvest in response to consistently high agricultural demand and worsening local economy appear to have endangered the population.

KEY WORDS: non-timber forest products in Mexico, Croton fantzianus, vara blanca, ethnoecology