The review of forestry extension presented in this paper revealed that top-down approaches continued to dominate both theory and practice. Top-down approaches, which regard extension as a one-way flow of information and materials to local users, persisted mainly because of the limited financial and human resources available to extension agencies, as well as their unwieldy bureaucracies and historical status as policing agents. Ideally, all rural development should adopt flexible bottom-up approaches, in which the role of extension workers is to facilitate information flows among all parties. The author supported her argument with examples of innovative extension programmes around the world.