Chapter 28

CONTRIBUTIONSOFECOLOGISTS

TOTROPICALFOREST

CONSERVATION

Francis E. Putz and Pieter A. Zuidema

OVERVIEW

Given that tropical forest conservation is not solely an ecological problem, ecologists can only hope to provide partial
solutions. Despite this fundamental limitation, ecological insights are needed and ecologists can also help to build
environmental awareness. But, they should also address the causes of destruction by considering the challenges facing
the people who determine forest fates. Efforts at reducing the technical impediments to conservation in the tropics
are likely to be successful only if researchers recognize the complex social, economic, and political contexts in which
conservation happens or fails to happen in developing countries. Ecologists working in these real landscapes need to
be careful when making assumptions about the concerns and values they share with local stakeholders. Caution is
also warranted when extrapolating from small-scale and narrowly focused research carried out in purportedly pristine
protected areas to the complex landscapes in which reasonable conservation interventions are needed. Furthermore,
ecologists should realize that conservation solutions for tropical forests vary in size, land use history, and socioeconomic
context, as well as that protecting depopulated parks is just one of a large variety of conservation options. If more than
a small portion of tropical forest biodiversity is to be conserved, more ecologists need to work outside protected areas
and focus on maximizing biodiversity conservation in the vast remaining areas of multifunctional and semi-natural
landscapes.

INTRODUCTION

The ongoing destruction of tropical forests is of
great concern to environmentalists and ecologists
in the West and to many people in the rest of the
world as well. School children are instructed about
the evils of deforestation, the media bombard us
with graphic accounts of widespread biodiversity
losses, and ecologists document in ever-increasing
detail and decry with stridency the deleterious
consequences of logging, fragmentation, farm-
ing, and fires (e.g., Laurance Chapter 27, this
volume). While these clarion calls play important
roles in the politics of conservation and in general
awareness-building, most ecologists and conser-
vation biologists fail to respond to them with

viable alternatives to forest conversion because

they disregard the social, economic, and political

contexts in which tropical forests are destroyed

or maintained. A consequence of this failure to

recognize the complex reality of tropical forest

conservation is that ecologists are increasingly

alienated from potential conservation allies whose

principal foci are peace, justice, poverty allevia-

tion, indigenous rights, sustainable resource use,

and policy reform (e.g., Colchester 1996, Neu-

mann 1997, Slater 2003, Chapin 2004,Terborgh

2005).

In this chapter we briefly describe the com-

plex and mostly human-dominated dimensions

in which tropical forest conservation happens

or fails to happen and explore some options for