This book contains commissioned background papers presented at a workshop on 'Research on non-timber forest products'. It brings together experience from different regions and professional backgrounds, attempts to analyse the complexity of the multiple use of forests from a multi-dimensional perspective (incorporating environmental, social, economic, technological, political, historical and cultural factors), and reviews current topics of discussion. The general conclusion drawn is that there is a need to build up an interdisciplinary research agenda, as well as to employ more than one approach or method in addressing the complex situations characterizing multiple forest use. There are 12 chapters: (1) Framing the issues relating to non-timber forest products research (Arnold; Ruiz Perez); (2) Observations on the sustainable exploitation of non-timber forest products: an ecologist's perspective (Peters, C. M.); (3) Not seeing the animals for the trees: the many values of wild animals in forest ecosystems (Redford, K. H.); (4) Modernisation and technological dualism in the extractive economy in Amazonia (Homma, A. K. O.); (5) Trade, indigenous rain forest economies and biological diversity: model predictions and directions for research (Wilkie, D. S.; Godoy, R. A.); (6) Smallholder forest management: looking beyond the non-timber forest products (Padoch, C.; Pinedo-Vasquez, M.); (7) Household extractive economies (Almeida, M. W. B.); (8) Developing research frames for non-timber forest products: experience from Ghana (Falconer, J.); (9) Forest products research in relation to conservation policies in Africa (Neumann, R. P.); (10) Living in abundance: the forest of the Wayampi (Amerindians from French Guiana) (Grenand, P.; Grenand, F.); (11) Technology and the organisation of production, processing and marketing of non-timber forest products (Hyman, E. L.); and (12) People's dependency on forests for food security: some lessons learnt from a programme of case studies (Ogle, B.). There are 2 annexes, the first reporting on the workshop at Hot Springs, and the second on a later workshop on the same subject held at Sotodel Real, Madrid, Spain, 11-16 February 1996.