Iranian government supports qualitative and quantitative development of medicinal plants because illegal and severe harvesting have seriously damaged their production in natural areas. This study aimed to evaluate the tendency of local communities for producing medicinal plants in forest and rangeland of Kamalan region, Golestan province. Interviews and questionnaires from the specific group of people familiar with medicinal plants including range managers, farmers, and villagers were used to collect the data. The validity and reliability of the questionnaires were approved by a panel of experts and calculating the Cronbach alpha coefficient, respectively. The tendency status of local for producing medicinal plants was regarded as an independent variable, while the age, occupation, secondary job, education level, farm area, and responsibility in the community were considered as dependent or predicted variable. The Logistic regression was used to explore the relationship between independent and dependent variables using SPSS 23. Results indicated that knowledge about the effects of medicinal plants on diseases, and land ownership had a positive (B= 12/12) and negative relation (B= -11.27) to the tendency of locals for producing medicinal plants, respectively. The result showed that the main positive and negative effective factors on local communities tendency for producing medicinal plants were knowledge of medicinal plants properties and land ownership, respectively (p <0.05). Providing facilities, extension workshops, and investing in cultivating medicinal plants can engage more people to medicinal plant industry. Policymakers can use the result of this study to monitor and enhance the tendency status of locals for producing medicinal plants.

Keywords: local communities, Medicinal plants, Forests and rangelands, Kamalan.

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