Chapter 26

TropicalRainforest

Conservation:AGlobal

Perspective

Richard T. Corlett and Richard B. Primack

OVERVIEW

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.

INTRODUCTION

The world’s tropical rainforests exist in five major
regions that are distinct ecological and biogeo-
graphical entities, each with its own unique
biota and interactions (Primack and Corlett
2005, Corlett and Primack 2006) (Figure 26.1).
These differences result largely from tens of mil-
lions of years of independent evolution during
the Tertiary, when wide oceanic barriers made

dispersal between regions particularly difficult

(Morley 2003), and have survived the more

recent joining of North and South America at

the Isthmus of Panama and the convergence

of New Guinea with Southeast Asia (Primack

and Corlett 2005). The absence of major groups

from particular regions is one obvious differ-

ence: New Guinea, for example, lacks groups that

are critical to other forests, such as primates,

ungulates, and eutherian carnivores, and, until