Proposal to combat illegal logging

Logging is a major threat to tropical forests. Logging roads and clearings allow more light into the forest, resulting in a proliferation of undergrowth, and allows more desiccation during the dry season. Logging slash - large branches and the crown of the tree - are also left behind to dry out. All [...]

Tropical deforestation (II)

In response to Wright and Muller-Landau’s paper on the future of tropical forests (which suggests that declining rural populations can allow forest recovery), Sloan pointed out reduced rural population often leads to increased deforestation. Really that’s not a huge surprise - peasant farmers tend to have limited labour to clean and plant land, and [...]

Patterns of tropical deforestation

In a fairly optimistic paper published in Biotropica in 2006* Joseph Wright and Helene Muller-Landau suggested that declining rates of population growth in tropical countries, coupled with increased urbanisation “give reason to hope that deforestation will slow, natural forest regeneration through secondary succession will accelerate, and the widely anticipated mass extinction of tropical forest species [...]