Background

According to the FAO definition (FAO, 1999) non-wood forest products (NWFPs) are of “biological origin other than wood derived from forests, other wooded land and trees outside forests”. NWFPs offer wide range of many different products. NWFPs can be derived from trees, understory plants, fungi or animals. They are collected from natural forests, or produced in plantations and agroforestry systems. Examples of NWFPs include mushrooms, truffles, bark (e. g. cork), nuts, acorns and other tree fruits, resin, understory berries, medicinal and aromatic plants, fodder and litter for livestock, honey and game. A similar term often used for such products is non-timber forest products (NTFPs). The main difference between them is that NWFPs exclude all wood and NTFPs do not exclude wood other than timber such as fuel-wood, artisanal use of wood or charcoal.

Importance of the NWFPs in the forestry is clearly reflected in the official statistics of their value (Tables 1, 2).

Table 1 – Value (1000€) of marketed NWFPs: marketed plant and fungi products (adapted from FOREST EUROPE, UNECE and FAO 2011)

European region	CM	MT	FBN	C	RR	OP	O
North	132 104	12 493	15 107	-	182	58 824	-
Central- West	733 900	14 550	883	775	32	7 202	55231
Central- East	2 830	10 587	28 132	-	1 621	1 802	106
South- West	110 828	124 161	299  574	323 850	2 364	-	7997
South-East	377	11 283	10 296	-	12 476	921	408
Total*	980 039	173 075	353 993	324 625	16 675	68 749	63742

*Europe without the Russian Federation

CM - Christmas trees; MT - Mushrooms and truffles; FBN - Fruits, berries and edible nuts; C- Cork; RR - resins, raw material – medicine, aromatic products, colorants, dyes; OP - Decorative foliage, including ornamental plants (e. g. mosses); O – Other plant products.

 

Table 2 - Value (1000€) of marketed NWFPs: marketed animal products (adapted from FOREST EUROPE, UNECE and FAO 2011)

European Region	GM	LA	P	H	R	O
North	5 791	-	345.5	-	-	-
Central-West	217 505	-	6 738	25 616	-	1 340
Central-East	15 117	1 221.2	2 136	-	1 115	2 461.1
South-West	149 537	-	-	101 088	-	-
South-East	4 266.5	-	8 439.16	3 660	-	-
Total*	392 217	1 221	17 659	130 364	1 115	3 801

*Europe without the Russian Federation

GM - Game meat; LA - Living animals; P - Pelts, hides, skins and trophies; H- Wild honey and bee-wax; R - Raw material for medicine, colorants ; O – Other animal products.

NWFPs importance differs between countries, therefore a comprehensive view on all their types across Europe is difficult to obtain. Examples of important NWFPs in Boreal and temperate forests are berries, mushrooms, game and Christmas trees. Concerning Mediterranean forests examples of important NWFPs are cork, pine nuts and mushrooms. Christmas trees, fruits, berries, edible nuts and cork represented, in 2010, 83% of the total value of marketed plant and fungi NWFPs in the FOREST EUROPE region (Table 1). The total reported value of marketed NWFPs is approximately EUR 2.7 billion and has almost tripled since the State of European Forests 2007 assessment. However such increase is partly an artifact due to the improved assessment and reporting of NWFPs that occurred in recent years (even though there are still many gaps in NWFPs statistics). In European countries where information is available the total value of marketed NWFPs represented 15 % of the round-wood value (FOREST EUROPE, UNECE and FAO 2011). Tables 1 and 2 highlight that there are NWFPs which although are relevant in its economic importance at European level they have a clear regional distribution (e. g. cork). On the contrary there are NWFPs with European economic relevance which, although they might be more important in some European regions, their distribution is European-wide (e. g. mushrooms and truffles, Christmas trees, etc.).

In Europe the multifunctional sustainable forest management (MSFM) paradigm is generally accepted on practical and political level. It aims at optimizing the provision of multiple goods and services which are demanded by society, while maintaining the equilibrium of the forest ecosystem. The need for meeting multifunctional demands as well as increasing the potential for commercialising NWFPs has been recognised by the European Forest-Based Sector Technology Platform. In order to optimise the production of a range of products and services forest management requires tools to quantify the production possibilities of wood and various different NWFPs and the impacts of forest management and changing environmental conditions (including climate-induced and emerging biotic and abiotic threats) in their provision. The provision of such information will facilitate a shift from wood-based management to MSFM. However, within European forest research, development and innovation have mainly focussed on timber production. Consequently there is a lack of detailed information in Europe about the ecology or economics of NWFPs so it is not possible to model or devise management systems to optimize the sustainable co-production of NWFPs, timber and ecosystem services in the context of climate change. Those issues are especially important in the context of an increased interest on NWFPs due to: a dramatic decline in round-wood sales process in Denmark (Helles and Thorsen, 2005); a rapid decrease of employment possibilities in German forestry (Mantau et al., 2005); and an interest in natural products in the UK (Slee et al., 2005).

The ecology of NWFPs is diverse as they represent a wide range of products from not only non-woody parts of trees (e.g. resins, fruit) and understory plants but also from other taxonomic kingdoms such as animals and fungi. Since abiotic factors that shape the ecology and dynamics of forests vary from temperature limitations in boreal and high mountain areas, to water limitations in the continental and Mediterranean regions, it might be expected that climate change will have a wide range of effects on NWFPs across Europe.

Modelling NWFPs in respect to their possible production systems (from plantations to natural forests) is a challenge due to the large differences compared to traditional modelling for timber production. Difficulties might arise for many reasons, singly or together such as: annual variability (masting), large and small-scale spatial variability, non-normality, lack of correlation with traditional forest site indices, little known autecology and lack of systematic statistic data. Lack of NWFPs data to develop models is often due to the fact that only few NWFPs are officially included in formal forest statistics and when statistical data are collected and published; its quality is often questionable.

NWFPs production in several regions is a significant source of income from forests. Valuing NWFPs might be easy and straightforward in some of these cases (e. g. chestnuts from northern Italy) but difficult in others (e. g. wild edible mushrooms). Those difficulties arise mainly in cases where NWFPs are freely collected under open access regimes to be used directly by the collectors or sold in informal markets. Therefore a comparison of property rights regimes for NWFPs across Europe is necessary as it forms the basis for understanding opportunities for improved NWFPs management and production in the future. For forest management planning and decision support purposes, it is important to develop models that show how the characteristics of the forest and the management operations that change these characteristics affect the yield of NWFPs.

Management of NWFPs requires knowledge of their ecology and an understanding of their role in different types of forest or silvopastoral systems as well as its economics, markets and legal regulations addressed by specific focussed policies. Optimizing NWFP management and use can in some cases require adjustments to forest management that might not be compatible with maximizing timber yield. Therefore managing NWFPs might require the implementation of strategies to support a truly integrated MSFM which takes into account the benefits of complementary product and services and the possible trade-offs between conflicting interests.

Most European countries have some sort of on-going NWFPs research being carried out. However, so far this knowledge has remained poorly disseminated and is not readily accessible across Europe. The dissemination of available information would be well served by a multidisciplinary European network on NWFPs but there is no such organisation. Thus, the establishment of a COST Action on NWFPs, promoting networking and capacity-building activities, will be a great benefit for the European forestry and natural resources sectors.