Tropical Rainforest Conservation: A Global Perspective

The five major rainforest regions (Asia, Africa, Madagascar, Neotropics, and New Guinea) are distinct ecological and biogeographical entities, each with its own levels of threat from various human activities. The purpose of this chapter is to review these threats, and then to evaluate the conservation strategies being used to deal with them. Across the tropics, commercial logging is increasingly the primary driver of forest degradation and loss, with particularly heavy logging rates in Southeast Asia. Hunting now threatens large vertebrates in most accessible forest areas, with potentially major consequences for the ecosystem processes these vertebrates mediate. Uncontrolled forest fires are an expanding problem when farmers set fires following logging. Globally, rainforest destruction is still dominated by poor farmers, but large-scale commercial monocultures are an increasingly important driver. Cattle ranching is particularly important in the Neotropics. Political instability and armed conflict are a problem in several areas, but particularly in Africa. Clearance rates vary hugely within and between regions, with Southeast Asia – particularly Indonesia – the current “disaster area.” Because of a rapidly rising human population and poverty, threats to rainforests will become even more severe in coming decades. Protected areas can conserve tropical forests, but most are underfunded and therefore underprotected. Linking conservation with development in Integrated Conservation and Development Projects has a poor record of success, but some mechanism is needed to transfer the costs of establishing protected areas from local communities to the developed world. Regulating rainforest exploitation is the other key challenge. Listings in CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) can limit international trade in overexploited species and certification schemes can support examples of best practice, but controlling the internal trade in timber, bushmeat, and other forest products is much more difficult. While efforts to restore rainforests on degraded sites will become increasingly important in future, these projects should not distract attention from protecting the rainforests that still remain.