Linking Forest Ecological Status to Wild Food Availability: A Quantitative Assessment

Debal Deb

Debal Deb

Volume6-Issue10
Dates: Received: 2025-10-14 | Accepted: 2025-10-22 | Published: 2025-10-23
Pages: 1544-1563

Abstract

Forests have always been an integral part of the livelihood of indigenous “Forest People” living in settlements in and around forests. The economic value of non-timber forest products is primarily comprised by wild food items, which constitute a substantial portion of the annual diet spectrum of the forest villagers. During the lean period of agricultural production, as well as in times of climate-induced uncertainties of food, harvest of wild food biota from the forest is a traditional measure of food security in the indigenous societies in much of global South. There is ample body of literature documenting the flow of wild food biomass into indigenous households of forest fringe villages in South and Southeast Asia, and it is common ecological understanding that the diversity, abundance, and availability of wild food depend on the forest ecological status. However, there is paucity of empirical studies to understand the association of forest floral species diversity, abundance and stand structure with the wild food biota diversity and biomass. This paper attempts to a primary quantitative assessment of wild food biomass flow into villages from different types of forests under two different categories of management, namely, centralized “Command and Control” style forest management by state Forest Department (FD), vis-à-vis decentralized Informal Community Management (ICM), examined in two districts of Odisha, India. This study reveals for the first time a set of significant linkages between forest stand ecological characters and wild food diversity and biomass in the forests. This study also reveals that aside from the forest ecological status, shaped largely by the management regime, ethnic food cultural preferences for diverse edible biota also determined the quantity of the food biomass harvest.

FullText HTML FullText PDF DOI: 10.37871/jbres2209

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How to cite this article

Deb D. Linking Forest Ecological Status to Wild Food Availability: A Quantitative Assessment. J Biomed Res Environ Sci. 2025 Oct 23; 6(10): 1544-1563. doi: 10.37871/jbres2209, Article ID: JBRES2209, Available at: https://www.jelsciences.com/articles/jbres2209.pdf

Subject area(s)

Natural Resource Management

Ecosystem Science

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