While previous studies focus on lack of enforcement of forest laws, poverty, and ecological values of forest dependent people, coherent studies on people’s motivations for forest illegalities and non-compliance behavior remain scanty. Emmanuel Ametepeh argues that the systematic analysis of cause-and-effect patterns related to forest management measures and policies through the lenses of the Forest Transition Theory uncovers severe limitations. The resulting multi-complex stress factors adversely impact and hence manifest in the form of deviant compliance behavior (“syndrome”) in the management endeavor of forest-fringe people. The Author shows that motivations for forest illegalities and associated non-compliance behavior is largely an outcome of adverse experiences forest people have been subjected to as a result of historical and contemporary neglects and marginalization in the management endeavor.