People have been gathering fruits, nuts, flowers, twigs, leaves, bark and other plant parts from the forest for millennia. Policy attention to such ‘minor’ forest products dates back to at least the colonial period, when taxing and control of such products became ubiquitous. But the term, ‘non-timber forest products’ (NTFPs) emerged only in 1989, and it came not from an economic perspective but an ecological one, one that sought to distinguish between ‘destructive’ extraction of timber and ‘benign’ extraction of NTFPs. Worldwide, NTFP-focused forest management has been championed as a win-win between meeting livelihood needs and conservation goals. In India, NTFP collection continues to be a significant part of the livelihoods of forest-dwelling communities, with estimates of the numbers of people involved in it ranging from 100 to 250 million. But the debate as to whether NTFP-focused forest management can be a win-win (as many civil society groups argue), or whether it is in fact a lose-lose as a low-income and ecologically destructive livelihood (as many policy makers continue to believe), is far from settled. The question, therefore, is whether, and under what conditions, can NTFP harvest be ecologically sustainable and also contribute to enhancing rural livelihoods. ATREE’s research over the past 20 years has attempted to answer different dimensions of this question. The research began even before the founding of ATREE, when a team of researchers, led by Kamal Bawa, launched a long-term action research programme—an NTFP enterprise-based approach to conservation— in partnership with the Soliga adivasi community and the Vivekananda Girijana Kalyan Kendra in the Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple (BRT) Wildlife Sanctuary, Karnataka. Over time, a number of researchers from ATREE and several collaborating organisations have deepened the work at this site, while studies in other parts of the Western Ghats and central-eastern India have expanded the scope. We present a broad-brush picture of the key insights from this body of work along the twin dimensions of ecological sustainability and livelihood enhancement.