The Forest Service in Mali was given the huge dual mandate of protecting all renewable natural resources and implementing desertification control measures. This paper evaluated Malian forestry policy, incumbent since colonial times and essentially restrictive and punitive, at a time when a national policy review was being conducted. The most attractive options for policy reform included separation of the policing and extension functions of the Forest Service, decentralisation of funding, and devolution of control to local people. Since the Forest Service was dependent on aid for most of its initiatives, donors were in a strong, maybe crucial, position to influence policy reform, but lacked the necessary coordination.