Introduction This annotated bibliography is intended for researchers, managers, policymakers, and industry participants concerned with development and conservation of non- timber forest products in the Pacific Northwest. Citations are followed by brief abstracts that highlight key themes as well as research methods, the location of the research or analysis, and the implications for management of nontimber forest products in the Pacific Northwest. Keywords at the end of each annotation are organized in an index that references species (both common and scientific name), geographic location, and key themes, topics, and organizations. The Pacific Northwest Research Station is also making this annotated bibliography available on diskette. The regional literature on nontimber forest products is fairly limited, although it has expanded considerably in the last 5 years. Much of the regional literature, espe- cially that addressing management and policy options, remains, however, in the realm of “gray” literature: unpublished manuscripts, discussion papers, proceedings of meetings, and agency memos. Given the wealth of information and perspectives, we have chosen to include regional gray literature in this bibliography. We also have drawn heavily on global lessons of nontimber forest product manage- ment, particularly from the Amazon basin, where nontimber forest product devel- opment has been attempted as a conservation mechanism, and from Scandinavia, where substantial government efforts have been directed towards catalyzing berry and mushroom collecting and bough production for rural development purposes. We have been hampered in our search of global examples by language barriers, access to publications, and time. In particular, a further exploration of the literature in Japanese, Russian, and Polish is warranted. An annotated bibliography of the literature in Russian is currently in preparation (by Weigand and others). In this introduction, we attempt to guide the reader through the bibliography by introducing the key themes and researchers within various topics. We first describe literature addressing the historic and current size and scope of the nontimber forest product industry in the Pacific Northwest, and then we place the region in a global context through a discussion of international markets and trade. This is followed by a discussion of sociocultural issues, including labor arrangements, patterns of access, and resource conflicts. The management section summarizes key man- agement themes, including the biological, ecological, and socioeconomic aspects of management, inventorying and monitoring, technical innovation and domesti- cation, and education. The section on policy issues explores the use of nontimber forest products to spur rural economic development and as a mechanism for pro- moting resource stewardship. Economic research, addressed next, centers on four themes: the economic contribution of nontimber forest products in various settings, their value relative to other forest uses, the analysis of joint production and agro- forestry systems, and improving the financial performance of nontimber forest product sectors. Finally, there is a discussion of ethical issues raised in the literature. Size, Structure, and Although the scope, structure, and economic contribution of the nontimber forest Scope products industry in the Pacific Northwest continues to be poorly documented, the understanding has grown tremendously in recent years. Before 1990, regional literature describing the nontimber forest products industry came primarily from the late 1940s and early 1950s. This post-World War II period saw a number of descriptions of the social organization of “brush pickers” (decorative greens harv- esters) and the market structure, trade characteristics, and economic value of 1 nontimber forest products (Allen 1950, Cronemiller and others 1950, Heckman 1951, Newton 1957, Shaw 1949, Weber 1949). The focus of these studies is primarily decorative greens, but harvest of some medicinal and edible plants also is described. Cronemiller and others estimated the commercial value of nontimber forest products in 1950 in Oregon at US$5 million, and Heckman estimated floral greens employment in the Pacific Northwest at 2,000 people. Following this period, the only regional authors describing nontimber forest products were Bender (1963), who provided a historical description of the cedar leaf oil industry, and Douglass (1970, 1975), who provided excellent status reports on the nontimber forest prod- uct industry in the Pacific Northwest. These Forest Service reports were presum- ably generated every 5 years, starting in 1965, although this first report was not located. The reports describe harvest activity by county and species, regional pro- duction and prices, and provide advice to harvesters and landowners. Douglass estimated that nontimber forest products provided US$15 million in income to harvesters in Oregon and Washington in 1969. In the early 1980s, the commercial wild edible mushroom industry began to develop in the Pacific Northwest. User conflicts and concerns about resource sus- tainability rekindled interest in nontimber forest products. In 1986, Acker provided a review of the emerging wild edible mushroom industry in Washington, including information on wages, export markets, regulatory issues, user conflicts, and policy options in preparation for potential regulation. Acker’s paper, in conjunction with that of Russell (1987), summarized the context for the Wild Mushroom Harvesting Act in Washington, passed in 1989, and described by Russell (1990). In the early 1990s, with timber harvests declining, the interest in nontimber forest products as a potential source of income and employment for forest-dependent communities led to increased interest in these “minor” forest products. Schlosser and others (1991) surveyed the Christmas and floral greens industry, and Schlosser and Blatner (1995) surveyed the wild edible mushroom industry and provided the first method- ical surveys and documentation of harvest volumes, prices, employment, produc- tion and marketing characteristics, and economic contribution of these industries. These studies have been key in documenting the nontimber forest product industry and providing a framework for management and policy formulation in the region. Additional studies address the production potential of Northwest forest lands (Schlosser and others 1992); critical management and policy issues (Schlosser and Blatner 1993); and potential products from east-side forests (Schlosser and Blatner 1994). Molina and his colleagues have contributed significantly to the regional under- standing of wild edible mushrooms (Molina and others 1993), particularly on issues of monitoring and resource sustainability (Molina and others, in press; Hosford and others 1995), as have Denison and Donaghue (1988, 1992). A number of sub- regional studies also have emerged, documenting aspects of the nontimber forest product industries in southwest Oregon (Fitzgerald 1986, Van Gaasbeck 1992); central western Oregon (Howell 1991), the Winema and Deschutes National For- ests (Lipske 1994), southwest Washington (Seely 1993), and the Klamath region (Richards and Creasy, in press). De Geus (1995) provides an excellent overview of nontimber forest products harvested in British Columbia, including a description of the uses, markets, distribution, ecology, and harvest of 211 products, as well as a discussion of management and policy issues. Interest in nontimber forest products also was spurred by the recent emergence of taxol, initially extracted from the bark of the Pacific yew ( Taxus brevifolia), as a 2 powerful anticancer agent (Wolf and Wortmann 1992). Although taxol has since been synthesized by Bristol-Myers Squibb, the sudden dramatic demand for yew bark gave rise to interesting research and policy discussions about the conserva- tion, management, and use of medicinal plants (Busing and others 1995; U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management 1992; Vance 1995; Wolf and Wortmann 1992) . Use of nontimber forest products in the region could grow and diversify with the rediscovery of uses by indigenous cultures. In particular, Turner and her col- leagues have contributed to our knowledge of uses, harvesting practices, and processing of useful plants among Native Americans, including the Coast Salish (1971a, 1971b), the Bella Coola (1972), the Kwaikutl (1973), the Okanagan-Colville (with Bouchard and Kennedy in 1980), the Hesquiat (1982), the Nitinaht (1983), the Salishan (with Nebda 1990), and the Thompson Indians (with Thompson and others, 1990). In addition, Turner has contributed studies of the traditional use of significant species, such as soapberry (1981), springbank clover and Pacific silverweed (1982), and devilsclub (1982) as well as general studies on food plants of British Columbia Indians (1975, 1978) and plants in British Columbia Indian technology (1979). Gottesfeld also has contributed to knowledge of ethnobotany in British Columbia by describing the role of bark products in aboriginal cultures (1992) and aboriginal burning practices (1994). Further south, Colville (1897) provided the first published ethnobotanical work in the Pacific Northwest with a study of plant and lichen use by the Klamath of south- ern Oregon. He was followed in 1940 by Gunther who described the use of plants among Native Americans inhabiting the west coast of Washington. More recent studies include a study of the