The Chipko movement shows that often it is rural women (such as the Chipko women), not the “outside” Western-trained forester, who are the experts (“the knowers”) on how to use indigenous forests for multiple purposes (e.g., for food, fuel, fodder for cattle, dyes, herbs, medicines, building materials, and household utensils).  Similarly, in Sierra Leone a study by feminist foresters revealed that, on the average, local men could name only eight different uses of local species of trees, while local women could name thirty-two uses of the same species of trees. The epistemological claim is that women of Sierra Leone have “indigenous technical knowledge” (ITK) about forest uses and production that is based on their daily, lived, gendered experiences in connection with forest use and management (Sally Fairfax and Fortmann 1990: 267). Their knowledge is borne from their situated, gendered, concrete, daily experiences as women.