opportunities, a higher value ascribed on forests by the general public and the government, or the government’s expanded capacity to implement forest protection.

Given the hypothetical relationship, income levels in most developing countries are well below the threshold levels at which deforestation decreases (Angelsen and Kaimomitz, 1999).

The forest transition theory started with the work of Mather (1992), a professor from Aberdeen University, who proposed that initially, a country’s forest cover goes through a phase of deforestation as it develops economically and socially, reaches a point of inflection, then eventually turns around and enter a phase of reforestation and stabilization in the forest cover (Zhang, 2000). This “forest transition” as Mather coined it, is an inverted “U-shaped curve” for forest cover as a function of time. During the period of deforestation, loggers and cultivators clear forest lands and convert them into agricultural lands to meet the increasing demand for food and raw materials of the economically growing nation. Then, agricultural expansion eventually stops. There are two forms of forest recovery after agricultural expansion. One is referred to as the “economic development path” and the other is the “forest scarcity path” (Rudel et al, 2005).

The “economic development path” take place when agricultural expansion stops and farm workers look for higher paying non-farm jobs. Due to the loss of some workers, wages increase which makes