Forests of Moldova represent an important source of energy for local populations and habitat for biodiversity, and offer important environmental benefits (e.g. soil protection, water regulation and carbon sequestration). Forests provide other provisioning ecosystem services as well. There is a long tradition among rural population to collect forest resources ranging from the tree branches to flowers in the spring. Forest fruits are collected and sold by the forest administrators as well as by the community members. If forest administrators record the collection and sale of forest products and thus allow the economic effect of these transactions to be estimated easily, then no control of the collections from the rural population, which makes difficult to quantify the relationship between rural population and forest products. FLEG II conducted a study in three sample communities (villages): Ciorasti in Nisporeni district, Borceag in Cahul district, and Alexandru cel Bun in Soroca district. These communities were selected as an accurate representation of the three main eco-regions (north, south and central) that represent different types of forest cover areas. We conducted survey in each community, by 50 households per a community (150 in total), using a common questionnaire. We also collected relevant information for each community, including condition and use of natural resources. According to official data, main source of income in all communities is agriculture. Our data showed the main source of income for local population is remittances, followed by agriculture, and then the forest. This is rather impressive considering that forest vegetation covers circa 13% of the country. Interestingly, in Cioresti village (with the highest share of forest) forest income was greater than the average (18.2%), while share of agriculture was lower (32.5%). Forest products represented 8.1% of the income in Alexandru cel Bun and 7.3% in Borceag. Nuts, primarily walnuts, are collected across the three sample villages, and represent the most valuable forest product (53% share in terms of value) as well as the most frequently collected product (17% in terms of frequency of total collection). The walnuts are used for personal consumption and are sold to businesses that specialize in the export. These businesses collect the nuts from the rural population in exchange for cash, then centralize and export them. Wood resources (pole/logs, timber, fuelwood and tree branches) represent the largest share of total revenue in terms of frequency of collection (34% (of total collections), and the second largest in terms of total value (42%) to the communities. Tree branches are used for livestock fodder and rural constructions. The main use of logs is for household needs. Fuelwood is the main source for heating and cooking for the majority of the rural areas. Officially, fuelwood sold by forest administrators represents a small portion of total wood consumed for heating, suggesting on a high dependence on illegal sources. Wood (fuelwood, timber, branches etc.) is bought by population from forest district units (i.e. Agency Moldsilva), which regulate harvesting and sale processes. However, members of community perceive this transaction as an income and not as expenditure, which supports the idea that illegal logging may be occurring. We may conclude illegal activities are driven mainly by the subsistence needs of local people. This brings attention to the scarcity of forest resources in Moldova and raises questions of their sustainable use. Our results confirmed that in poor rural communities, the lower the household income is, the higher the dependence on the forest is. The Relative Forest Income (RFI) (measured as forest income divided by total income) varied between 1% and 35% across studied communities. Other activities, primarily agriculture, represent important and diverse sources of income. A high RFI indicates on a relative closeness to the forest as well as less diversified sources of income. A decrease in the RFI slope is related to general access to agricultural resources According to our data, there is a high dependency on forest among rural population. Although the main income source is agriculture, the low elasticity of the RFI variation over income quintile shows that forest dependency is common to almost all households and is related to the resource availability rather than to the socio-economic characteristics of households. The fact that wood resources, especially fuelwood, are the most valuable (with a notable exception of nuts) and frequent forest product shows that from a household perspective, the forest is used primarily to meet households’ needs and secondarily as a resource to supplement their income. The use of other resources, including nuts and forest fruits (such as rosehip, strawberry, etc.) and whether linked to cash value (as nuts are) or not, is driven more by the tradition than the market or other socio-economic factors. Fuelwood is obtained from annual tree felling regardless of whether the state forest administration is paid for this activity or not. The fact that the respondents included the fuelwood into the net incomes (but officially all fuelwood can only be purchased from the market), made us conclude there are sources of wood other than the official ones, including possible illegal logging activities supported by the forestry personnel. Considering the magnitude of these phenomena it can be assumed that such harvesting practice must also be linked to tradition.