478 Francis E. Putz and Pieter A. ZuidemaLandscape settingUrban RemoteRecreational/Educational value____()SmallGreatBiodiversity value (-----)
SmallGreatFigure 28.2 The direct value of forests to human
societies is often highest for forests near urban centers,
even if they are low in diversity and severely degraded.
Forests with high biodiversity value are typically in
remote areas,awayfrom where many people live, and
therefore of lower direct societal value.
2004, Bakeret al. 2005, Mann 2005). Remaining
tropical forests vary in size and, in some settings,
even small and degraded forest patches can have
large conservation values (Figure 28.2). Unfortu-
nately, the following have typically failed to attract
attention from ecologists concerned about tropical
forest conservation:- Small patches of forest in urban settings that
are important for environmental education, recre-
ation, and environmental services (e.g., noise
abatement). - Buffer zones and parks in the rapidly expanding
suburbs around already huge and rapidly grow-
ing cities such as São Paulo, Accra, Jakarta, and
others (e.g., Turner 1996, Turner and Corlett
1996). - Larger forests in more rural settings that were
mostly defaunated by hunters and otherwise
degraded by repeated-entry logging, overgrazing,
and wildfires. - Extensive tracts of forests that are officially des-
ignated for production of timber and non-timber
forest products (NTFPs; e.g., Brazil nuts, incense
resins, and rattan palms). - Equally extensive areas under the control of
rural communities and intended for multiple uses
including NTFP collection, hunting, subsistence
farming, and timber stand management.
A major task in forest conservation will be to
design ways to maintain ecosystem functions and
maximize biodiversity conservation in landscapes
that include this range of forest sizes, forest types,
forest owners, use histories, neighborhoods, and
benefits (Zuidema and Sayer 2003, Rudel 2005,
Sayer and Maginnis 2005).
Although large protected areas are critical
for maintaining the full complement of tropical
species, forests under various sorts of commercial
management are also of conservation value and
are much more extensive in area (Figure 28.3). In
fact, given the vast extents of populated, exploited,
and managed areas (e.g., Asneret al. 2005), these
“workingforests”haveahugeconservationpoten-
tial, even if their biodiversity per unit area is lower
than in protected areas (e.g., Zarinet al. 2004).
It is also in these exploited or actively managed
forests that ecologists could make their largest
contributions to conservation by solving instead
of just describing problems in ever-increasing
detail (Putz 2004). In particular, while it is use-
ful to know how different intensities of forest
management influence the retention of biodiver-
sity and the maintenance of ecosystem functions
(e.g., hydrological processes and carbon seques-
tration), ecologists could hel pmore in the devel-
opment of management techniques that serve
their purpose (e.g., promoting regeneration and
tree growth to sustain yields; Peña-Claroset al.
2008a,b) while being financially viable, socially
appropriate, and environmentally sound. Ecolog-
ical insights would be particularly useful in the
poorly stocked and weed-infested forests that suf-
fered overexploitation due to short-term profit
maximization. It is frustrating that uncontrolled
natural resource exploitation and forest destruc-
tion continue, but this frustration should not be
used as an excuse for not trying to solve manage-
ment problems until available funds and political
will are such that widespread protection is possi-
ble. Instead of waiting for this unlikely alignment,
certifiers working with the Forest Stewardship
Council (www.fsc.org) are addressing some of
these problems, but without the assistance of the
ecologists who prefer protected forests where they
can ask purely ecological questions.
Given that substantial expansion of protected
areas beyond the 18–23% of tropical forests