Data from: Conservation versus livelihoods: spatial management of non-timber forest product harvests in a two-dimensional model

Areas of high biodiversity often coincide with communities living in extreme poverty. As a livelihood support, these communities often harvest wild products from the environment. But harvest activities can have negative impacts on fragile and globally important ecosystems. This paper examines tradeoffs in ecological protection and community welfare from the harvest of wild products. With a novel model and empirical evidence, I show that management of harvest activity does not always resolve these tradeoffs. In a model of continuous harvests in a two-dimensional landscape, managed harvest activity improves welfare, but is uniformly bad for other ecosystem services that are sensitive to the presence (as opposed to the intensity) of human activity. Empirical results from a unique dataset of mushroom harvesters in Yunnan, China suggest more experienced, poorer, and more vulnerable individuals tend to rely on more distant harvests. Thus policies that limit the extent of forest travel, such as protected areas, may protect fragile ecosystems but can have a disproportionately negative effect on those most vulnerable.生物多样性极高的区域，往往与极度贫困社区交错分布。作为生计来源，这类社区常从自然环境中采收野生物产。但采收活动会对脆弱且具有全球重要性的生态系统造成负面影响。本文探讨了野生产物采收活动在生态保护与社区福祉之间产生的权衡关系。本文通过全新模型与实证证据证明，对采收活动进行管理并非总能化解此类权衡。在二维景观下的连续采收模型中，管控后的采收活动能够提升社区福祉，但会对所有受人类活动存在（而非活动强度）影响的其他生态系统服务造成负面影响。基于中国云南省蘑菇采收者的独特数据集得到的实证结果显示，经验更丰富、家境更贫困且社会处境更脆弱的群体，往往会选择前往更远的区域开展采收活动。因此，诸如保护区这类限制林区通行范围的政策，虽可保护脆弱生态系统，却可能对处境最脆弱的群体造成不成比例的负面影响。