452 Richard T. Corlett and Richard B. Primack
away. The “fences and fines” approach to conser-
vation that has worked so well in the developed
world does not transfer easily to large tropical
parks surrounded by desperately poor people. One
option currently being developed is to make direct
payments to individual landowners and local
communities, either for environmental services
(water, carbon fixation) or for the protection of the
rainforest and its fauna (Ferraro and Kiss 2002,
Kiss 2004, Primack 2006, Putz and Zuidema
Chapter 28, this volume). Direct payments have
a much shorter record than ICDPs, but their rela-
tive simplicity makes their effectiveness potentially
testable with an experimental approach.
Regulating exploitation
Parks will not be enough. However successful we
are in expanding the present coverage of protected
areas and ensuring their proper management,
they will inevitably be too few, too small, and too
unrepresentative to preserve all of the rainforest
biodiversity. Most rainforest regions will continue
to have a larger area of forest outside the parks, so
regulating its exploitation can make a major con-
tribution to the protection of rainforest diversity.
Even the unregulated exploitation of timber and
wildlife, as long as it maintains forest cover, pro-
tects much more biodiversity than clearance for
pasture or crops.
Logging damage can be reduced by using meth-
ods known collectively as reduced impact logging
or RIL. These involve guidelines designed to min-
imize damage to soils and the next generation of
commercial trees, as well as non-target species of
plants and animals (Putzet al. 2000). A number
of studies have now shown that the application
of RIL can potentially benefit everyone, reducing
notjustenvironmentaldamage,butalsothefinan-
cial costs of logging (Putzet al. 2000, Boltzet al.
2003, Pearceet al. 2003). However, most rain-
forest logging is either illegal or involves only a
short-term concession, so the loggerderives no
financial benefit from protecting soils and future
generations of trees. Some aspects of RIL, such
as the training of workers, careful planning of
roads, and directional felling of trees, make sense
in any logging operation, but others, such as the
exclusion of stee pslo pes and streamside forests,
merely cut profits (Putzet al. 2000). The forest
owner – the state in most rainforest countries –
would undoubtedly benefit from the strict applica-
tion of RIL guidelines, but enforcing them requires
a well-trained, adequately paid, and highly moti-
vated team of forest officers, which few rainforest
countries have.
In many places, logging activity is focused on
a single species, thus providing, at least in the-
ory, a relatively simple target for control. In 2002,
the Conference of Parties to CITES (Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species of
Wild Fauna and Flora) voted to list the big-leaf
mahogany,Swietenia macrophylla, on Appendix II –
the first such listing for a major timber species
(Chen and Zain 2004). Other species have fol-
lowed, including ramin (Gonystylusspp.), from the
peat-swamp forests of Indonesia and Malaysia.
The criteria for trade in Appendix II species focus
on sustainability, with exporting countries having
to provide permits verifying that the shipment was
legally acquired and that export will not be detri-
mental to the survival of the species. Although
CITES listing is certainly not the perfect answer to
controlling the legal and illegal overexploitation
of rainforest timber, it has the advantage of being
rapid and of using laws already in force in most of
the producer and consumer nations.
CITES has already had a large impact on the
international trade in endangered rainforest ani-
mals, such as primates (Chapman and Peres
2001) and parrots (Wrightet al. 2001), but list-
ing will not affect the huge internal trade in
endangered species in many rainforest countries
(e.g., Chapmen and Peres 2001, Wrightet al.
2001, Duarte-Quiroga and Estrada 2003), nor
does it hel pwith the much broader threat from
the bushmeat trade. In some areas, the threat from
bushmeat hunting is so urgent that only an imme-
diate and massive investment in enforcement can
saveviablepopulationsof largevertebrates(Walsh
et al. 2003). Other strategies include working
with logging companies to stop the transport of
hunters and wild meat on logging trucks, pro-
moting affordable alternative sources of protein,
education, and banning the commercial trade
while still allowing subsistence hunting (Robinson
and Bennett 2000).