China has put forward a series of forestry-based poverty alleviation policies, aiming to alleviate poverty and improve the livelihoods of rural households, especially in backward and ecologically fragile areas with rich forest resources. Based on field survey data, we used an empirical analysis method to investigate the role of forestry-based policies in alleviating the relative poverty of rural households in the rocky desertification area in southwest China. The Logit regression results demonstrate that forestry-based poverty alleviation policies are significant at alleviating the relative poverty of rural households, and there are differences in the degree and significance of the impact of various forestry-based poverty alleviation policies. In particular, the forestry industry support (FIS) policy, the ecological forest rangers (EFRs) policy, and the Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) can significantly decrease the incidence of relative poverty of rural households, while the effect of the Public Benefit Forest Compensation Program (PBFC) on decreasing the incidence of relative poverty is not significant. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the role and effectiveness of China’s forestry-based poverty alleviation policies, and can provide a reference for optimizing the forestry poverty alleviation policies for the specific area and even the whole nation, as well as provide experience for worldwide poverty alleviation by forestry.

To achieve the dual goal of poverty alleviation and ecological restoration, the policy of ecological forest rangers (EFRs) was implemented in rural poverty-stricken areas in China, where local residents commonly depend on nearby forest resources for livelihoods. This study aimed to analyze the short-term and long-term effectiveness of the EFRs policy in China mainly in poverty alleviation and income growth, with a brief discussion on the ecological effect of the policy. A questionnaire survey was conducted in four counties in the Karst rocky desertification region in southwest China. By combing through the early literature on REDD+, community forestry, leasehold forestry, etc., this paper summarizes the experience and lessons of similar community forest management models, aiming to explain the unsustainability of EFRs policy from the perspective of forest tenure and governance. The findings of the effectiveness analysis of EFRs policy in the four poverty-stricken counties reflect different degrees of effect in rural households with different income levels. We believe that the EFRs policy has played important roles in short-term regional poverty alleviation while its potential for long-term income growth has not been stimulated. For the amendment of EFRs policy, we put forward the following points: (1) It is necessary to redesign the selection and recruitment mechanism, as well as the exit mechanism of EFRs adapting to the local conditions. (2) It is advisable to further improve the local assessment and monitoring system of forest protection quality of EFRs and optimize the establishment of benefit linkage mechanism between protection effectiveness and EFRs remuneration. (3) The EFRs remuneration standards should be dynamically raised to assure the active participation of EFRs in forest protection. Furthermore, there is a need for one more effective integration model of forest protection and rural livelihoods improvement, which is considered as a potential future research direction.