Combating Deforestation Could Have Consequences for Tropical Forests

Combating deforestation and degradation could lead to bad outcomes. Scientists have found that efforts to restore forests can actually go awry if the people making the plans of action don't choose wisely.

Deforestation continues to plague much of South America, Southeast Asia and the Congo Basin. At the same time, agricultural fires and uncontrolled logging can cause devastating impacts to tropical forests around the world. In fact, it's estimated that 18 million acres of forest a year is divested of its trees.

Needless to say, may hope to combat this crisis by planting new trees are allowing forests to naturally recover. It turns out, though, that these strategies actually have consequences.

"When you save a forest from deforestation, it's great, but you might not have gotten the full package of what you wanted," said Francis E. Putz, one of the researchers, in a news release.

The main issue is that the benefits of a forest are jeopardized when land-use decisions are based on overly loose classifications. For example, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization describes a forest as being an area of more than .5 hectares with trees taller than about 16 feet and more than 10 percent canopy cover. This actually causes plantations to qualify as forests, even though they cause losses in biodiversity.

When helping forests recover, people need to consider short- and long-term financial profits, biodiversity and local needs for timber and non-timber forest products such as medicinal plants.

"We need to demand clarity about what's meant by 'forest' and what the full range of costs are of different interventions," said Putz in a news release. "Then we need to figure out the mechanism to get decision-makers to employ the interventions that are least damaging to naturalness but that still satisfy their other desires."

The findings are published in the journal Biotropica.