This chapter analyses the impacts arising from the enforcement, as well as the lack of enforcement, of the forestry regulatory framework on rural livelihoods at the local scale, and more precisely on a local council scale. Other forest-related laws, such as protected area laws, land tenure laws, and human rights laws, are not considered. Given space limitations, the detailed focus on the application of the law precludes the analysis of the 'macro' players (e.g. central services at ministries, World Bank, aid agencies and logging industry lobbies), who were influential in the design of the law (Ekoko, 2000) and, obviously, influence its implementation. The chapter is organized around the five main law-related issues : classification of the permanent forest estate; rights related to hunting and gathering of non-timber forest products (NTFPs); commercial timber production; small-scale timber production; and community forests