Tropical Rainforest Conservation 451biodiversity. Costa Rica’s parks are relatively suc-
cessful(Sánchez-Azofeifaet al.2003),forexample,
whiletwodecadesof chaosintheDRChasleftmost
parks there effectively unprotected (Inogwabini
et al. 2005), and many of Indonesia’s parks are
subject to virtually uncontrolled logging, hunting,
and, in some areas, forest clearance (Curranet al.
2004). Most rainforest protected areas lie between
these extremes. They often have huge problems,
including poaching and encroachment of park
boundaries, but both the vegetation and fauna are
usually in much better condition inside parks than
outside (Bruneret al. 2001, DeFrieset al. 2005,
Struhsakeret al. 2005). Pressures on rainforest
parks are mounting, however, as human popu-
lations increase. A recent satellite-based survey
found that 69% of moist tropical forest parks sur-
veyedexperiencedadeclineinforesthabitatwithin
50 km of their boundary over the last 20 years
(DeFrieset al. 2005).
Rainforest parks come in all different sizes and
shapes (Putz and Zuidema Chapter 28, this vol-
ume).The massive, but almost completely unman-
aged, national parks of the Brazilian Amazon
represent one extreme (Peres andTerborgh 1995).
Such huge parks are probably the only way to pre-
serve complete rainforest ecosystems, including
the full range of species, habitats, and ecological
processes (Laurance 2005, Peres 2005). The win-
dow of opportunity for establishing large parks is
rapidly closing, as loggers andsettlers move into
new areas, so the completion of a pantropical net-
work of representative protected parks is the most
urgent priority in rainforest conservation. Large
parks alone will not be enough, however; smaller
rainforest reserves, down to a few hectares in size,
can also play a valuable role in an overall con-
servation strategy, protecting species and habitats
not represented in the larger parks (Turner and
Corlett 1996). Indeed, in much of the tropics,
there are no large areas of intact rainforest left
to protect, so small reserves are the only way to
save what survives.
Declaring new parks is one thing; effectively
protecting them is another. Most rainforest parks
arechronicallyunderfundedandthereforechroni-
cally underprotected (e.g., Inogwabiniet al. 2005).
The priorities are usually to increase the number
of staff, improve their training, and increase their
mobility. Although tourism can provide a source
of income in accessible parts of politically stable
countries (Gossling 1999, Naidoo and Adamowicz
2005), most parks cannot be expected to generate
significant income (Balmford and Whitten 2003,
Inogwabiniet al. 2005). As a result, they are a
net cost to the local and national economies. Even
if rainforest countries spend a similar proportion
of their national budgets on protected areas as
is done in Europe or North America, the bulk of
the costs of most parks will have to be paid by
the developed world (Balmford and Whitten 2003,
Blom 2004). The key needs for funding protected
areas are stability and accountability: the first is a
prerequisite for long-term planning, particularly
in areas with ongoing political instability, while
the second is necessary to reassure donors that
their money is being spent correctly (Blom 2004).
Conservation trust funds are one way of achieving
both of these (Balmford and Whitten 2003, Blom
2004, Kiss 2004).
In practice, the costs of establishing new pro-
tected areas in inhabited regions are currently
borne by the local people, who lose access to
resources within the park boundaries, and who
may be displaced from their homes and farms
(Ferraro 2002). Creating parks without adequate
compensation and/or opportunities for participa-
tion in any benefits is both immoral and, in the
long term, unworkable, since the cost of pro-
tecting a large forest area against resentful local
communities is likely to be prohibitive (Balmford
and Whitten 2003). In Africa, a positive attitude
by the neighboring community was the best pre-
dictor of success in rainforest parks (Struhsaker
et al. 2005).
Formorethanadecade, thedominantapproach
to biodiversity conservation in developing coun-
tries was the Integrated Conservation and Devel-
opment Project (ICDP), which linked conservation
of biodiversity with the economic development of
neighboring communities. Huge amounts of both
conservation and development funding have been
sunk into such projects, despite little evidence for
success in either objective, never mind in recon-
ciling the two (Terborghet al. 2002, Christensen
2004, McShane and Wells 2004). There has
recently been a backlash against ICDPs, but the
problems they aimed to address have not gone