Agricultural Settlement and Land Use in Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 583

FIGURE 11.23 Milling timber, Bilauktaung Range, Myanmar. The saw blade appears in the upper
right. (Photo by S. F. Cunha.)
FIGURE 11.24 Log home in the Bismarck Range, Papua New Guinea. Pressed mud fills the space
between logs. (Photo by S. F. Cunha.)
The Forest and the Trees
Mountain forests also produce many important nonwood products. These include fruits,
nuts, animal fodder (which may double as roof insulation), mushrooms, resins, gums,
cane, spices, and medicinal plants. While each on its own rarely equals the cash value
of timber, their collective worth exceeds that of wood products and is more easily sus-
tained, with less disruption of water retention and erosion capacities. They also provide
more reliable income (Arnold and Ruiz Pérez 2000). The products are deeply woven
into the socioeconomic interdependencies of mountain life, including diet, religious be-
liefs, building materials, household and textile goods, and livestock production. Peruvi-
an anthropologist Lupe Camino identifies a central Andean “health axis” where the on-
going collection of medicinal plants dates from the first millennium B.C. (Bussmann et
al. 2007). A 1994 study in Uganda's Mount Elgon National Park found that nontimber
products, such as bamboo, fuelwood, medicinal plants, and rope, had seven times the
value of a potential timber harvest (Scott 1998). There is mounting evidence that non-
forest products generate more sustainable income than timber removal in the hilly ter-
rain of India's Keonjihar District (Mahapatra and Tewari 2005). In southern China, the
markets overflow with over 150 forest and forest-farm products (Hamilton et al. 1997).
The overall social and economic value of nonforest products in the montane forests of