19 Feb2001

Overstory #77 - Tropical Forest Conservation

Written by J. Louise Mastrantonio and John K. Francis.

Types of Tropical Forests

About half of all the world's forests are in the Tropics, the area between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. In addition to rain forests, there are mangroves, moist forests, dry forests, and savannas. Such classifications, however, give only a slight indication of the diversity of tropical forests. One study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which considered 23 countries in tropical America, 37 in tropical Africa, and 16 in tropical Asia, identified dozens of types of tropical forests: open and closed canopy forests, broad leaved trees and conifer forests, closed forests and mixed forest grasslands, and forests where agriculture has made inroads.

Value of Tropical Forests

All forests have both economic and ecological value, but tropical forests are especially important in global economy. These forests cover less than 6 percent of the Earth's land area, but they contain the vast majority of the world's plant and animal genetic resources.

Wood and Other Products

Tropical forests provide many valuable products including rubber, fruits and nuts, meat, rattan, medicinal herbs, floral greenery, lumber, firewood, and charcoal. Such forests are used by local people for subsistence hunting and fishing. They provide income and jobs for hundreds of millions of people in small, medium, and large industries.

Other Economic Values

Tropical forests are home for tribal hunter-gatherers whose way of life has been relatively unchanged for centuries. These people depend on the forests for their livelihood. More than 2.5 million people also live in areas adjacent to tropical forests. They rely on the forests for their water, fuelwood, and other resources and on its shrinking land base for their shifting agriculture. For urban dwellers, tropical forests provide water for domestic use and hydroelectric power. Their scenic beauty, educational value, and opportunities for outdoor recreation support tourist industries.

Many medicines and drugs come from plants found only in tropical rain forests. Many more may be found. In all, only a few thousand species have been evaluated for their medicinal value.

In addition, many plants of tropical forests find uses in homes and gardens: ferns and palms, the hardy split-leaf philodendron, marantas, bromeliads, and orchids, to name just a few.

Environmental Benefits

Tropical forests do more than respond to local climatic conditions; they actually influence the climate. Through transpiration, the enormous number of plants found in rain forests return huge amounts of water to the atmosphere, increasing humidity and rainfall, and cooling the air for miles around. In addition, tropical forests replenish the air by utilizing carbon dioxide and giving off oxygen. By fixing carbon they help maintain the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and counteract the global "greenhouse" effect.

Forests also moderate stream flow. Trees slow the onslaught of tropical downpours, use and store vast quantities of water, and help hold the soil in place. When trees are cleared, rainfall runs off more quickly, contributing to floods and erosion.

Deforestation

Several factors are responsible for deforestation in the Tropics: clearing for agriculture, fuelwood cutting, and harvesting of wood products. By far the most important of these is clearing for agriculture. In the Tropics, the age-old practice of shifting, sometimes called "slash-and-burn," agriculture has been used for centuries. In this system, local people cut a small patch of forest to make way for subsistence farming. After a few years, soil fertility declines and people move on, usually to cut another patch of trees and begin another garden.

In the abandoned garden plot, the degraded soil at first supports only weeds and shrubby trees. Later, soil fertility and trees return, but that may take decades. As population pressure increases, the fallow (rest) period between cycles of gardening is shortened, agricultural yields decrease, and the forest region is further degraded to small trees, brush, or eroded savanna.

Conversion to sedentary agriculture is an even greater threat to tropical forests. Vast areas that once supported tropical forests are now permanently occupied by subsistence farmers and ranchers and by commercial farmers who produce sugar, cocoa, palm oil, and other products.

In many tropical countries there is a critical shortage of firewood. For millions of rural poor, survival depends on finding enough wood to cook the evening meal. Every year more of the forest is destroyed, and the distance from home to the forest increases. Not only do people suffer by having to spend much of their time in the search for wood, but so does the land. Damage is greatest in dry tropical forests where firewood cutting converts forests to savannas and grasslands.

The global demand for tropical hardwoods, an $8-billion-a-year industry, also contributes to forest loss. Tropical forests are usually selectively logged rather than clear-cut. Selective logging leaves the forest cover intact but usually reduces its commercial value because the biggest and best trees are removed. Selective logging also damages remaining trees and soil, increases the likelihood of fire, and degrades the habitat for wildlife species that require large, old trees-the ones usually cut. In addition, logging roads open up the forests to shifting cultivation and permanent settlement.

Tropical Forestry

Forestry--loosely defined as the systematic management and use of forests and their natural resources for human benefit--has been practiced for centuries. Most often, forestry efforts have been initiated in response to indiscriminate timber cutting that denuded the land and caused erosion, floods, or a shortage of wood products.

In the past, timber harvest in the Tropics has seldom been followed by regeneration. Conversion to agriculture is often permanent or results in soil erosion. Timber harvest contracts have usually been short term and have provided little or no incentive for timber companies to replant. So little reforestation has been done in the Tropics that many people believe these forests cannot be restored. However, there are many examples of successful reforestation in India, Indonesia, and the Caribbean.

In the Tropics, as elsewhere, forestry is a mixture of modern innovations and ancient techniques borrowed from local tradition. Plantation forestry is common. Forest reserves have been established for timber harvest, wildlife habitat, scenery, outdoor recreation, or watershed protection. And in the Tropics, agroforestry is much more common than elsewhere.

Plantation Forestry

In the Tropics, trees are often planted and grown in plantations for wood production. Often, many species must be tried to determine which will grow best. Plantations must also be supported by major investments in forest management and research. Forest nurseries must be established, and planting techniques and cultural practices (spacing and thinning, pruning, fertilization, insect and disease control, and genetic improvement) must be developed.

Forest Reserves

There are many reasons for establishing forest reserves in the Tropics. They can restore watersheds and wildlife habitat, improve scenic beauty and opportunities for outdoor recreation, and produce wood and other products for local use and export. Many forest products contribute to the sustenance and income of local people: wildlife and fish, firewood, rubber, fruits and nuts, rattan, medicinal herbs, floral greenery, and charcoal.

Another type of forest reserve is the "extractive" reserve, which is dedicated to the production of useful products. Large reserves of this type have been established recently in Brazil. Local residents use them for tapping rubber, for gathering fruits and nuts, for hunting, and for harvesting wood on a sustained yield basis. Such uses provide a sustainable income while maintaining the ecological integrity of the forest.

Agroforestry

The practice growing of trees in combination with agricultural crops is fairly common in the Tropics. It is possible to grow food crops year around in many forested areas, and rural poor depend on this source of food as nowhere else on Earth. Some examples follow.

Taungya System

Various systems have been developed for combining forestry with agriculture. "Taungya" is a Burmese word meaning cultivated hill plot. After existing forest or ground cover is removed by burning, trees are planted along with agricultural crops. Both are cultivated until the tree canopy closes. Then the area is left to grow trees, and another site is located for combined forestry agriculture.

Shade Cropping

An overstory of trees is often used to provide shade for agricultural crops. A common practice is to grow tree species such as guaba (Inga vera) over coffee. In Puerto Rico, many forests developed where coffee was once grown in this manner.

Support Crops

Trees can be planted to provide support (and sometimes shade) for vine crops. Vines such as pepper and vanilla need support.

Alley Cropping

Nitrogen-fixing trees are planted in hedges in widely-space parallel rows along the contour of slopes. Food crops are grown in the "alley" between the rows. The trees add nitrogen and organic matter, protect the soil from erosion, and provide wood and animal forage.

Living Fences

Green fenceposts that will root and sprout often are planted in a closely spaced row. When they sprout, they create a "living fence" that provides shade and forage for cattle.

Windbreaks

Trees are often planted as windbreaks for agricultural crops, farms, or homesites. Such plantings can eventually contribute wood products as well as shelter. Food trees such as citrus, rubber, and mango can also provide fuel, lumber, and other wood products when they have outlived their original usefulness.

New Directions in Tropical Forestry

The conservation issues of the past seem simple compared with those of today. In the 21st century, human societies are concerned with global warming, deforestation, species extinction, and rising expectations. Growing populations must be fed, clothed, and sheltered, and people everywhere want higher standards of living.

Role of Forests

Trees, the largest of all land plants, act as a kind of environmental "buffer" for the ecosystem they dominate. They help ameliorate the extremes of climate (heat, cold, and wind) and create an environment where large land mammals, including people, can live comfortably. Trees complement animals in the global environment. Mammals take in oxygen from the air and exhale carbon dioxide. Plants use the carbon dioxide in their growth processes, store the carbon in woody tissues, and return oxygen to the atmosphere as a waste product. This process, known as photosynthesis, is essential to life. Carbon captured from the atmosphere by photosynthesis is eventually recycled through the environment in a process known as the carbon cycle. Trees have an especially important role in the carbon cycle. Tree leaves also act as filters to remove atmospheric pollutants from the air. This effect is particularly beneficial in urban areas.

Forestry Issues

Two key issues will dominate forestry in the years ahead:

(1) maintaining long-term productivity of managed forests, and

(2) preventing further loss of tropical forests. Both problems will require new approaches to forest management.

Traditionally, forestry has focused on growing crops of wood in plantations or in managed natural stands. In this "agricultural mode," other benefits of forest such as watershed protection, wildlife habitat, climate moderation, and outdoor recreation, have received less attention than wood production.

Perhaps more importantly, the sustainability of the full range of forest benefits has not been measured. There is no question that trees can be grown for crops of wood in managed stands. With intensive management-short rotations, species selection, genetic improvement, fertilization, thinning, and other cultural treatments-more wood can be produced in less time than in natural forests. But for how long? And at what cost in other benefits?

As more and more of the world's original forests have been cut, the ecological value of forests has come to be more appreciated. In recent years, increased emphasis has been put on what some are calling "ecosystem management." In this model, the health and long-term stability of the forest are paramount, and timber production is considered a byproduct of good forest management rather than the principal product. In Puerto Rico, for example, wood production is a relatively minor aspect of forestry. Since the 1930's when timber harvests were curtailed, the forests have been managed primarily for watershed protection, wildlife habitat, and outdoor recreation.

There are no easy solutions to the problem of tropical forest destruction, but most experts agree that the problems cannot be solved simply by locking up the forests in reserves. The forests are too important to local people for that to be a workable solution. There is no doubt that tropical forests will be cut. It is better for them to be cut in an ecologically sound manner than to be cleared for poor-quality farmland or wasted by poor harvest practices.

The only real long-term solutions are: (1) more efficient agriculture on suitable farmland, (2) efficient forestry practice including plantations, and (3) reserves to protect species and ecosystems. Many forestry experts believe that we have only begun to tap the potential for wise use of tropical forests. Many uses have yet to be fully explored. We are only starting to learn the value of tropical forests for medicines, house and garden plants, food and fiber, tourism, and natural resource education.

About the Authors

J. Louise Mastrantonio is a freelance science writer in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.

John K. Francis is a research forester at the International Institute of Tropical Forestry, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rio Piedras, PR 00928-5000, in cooperation with the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico 00936-4984.

Original Source

This article is excerpted with kind permission of the authors from _A Student Guide To Tropical Forest Conservation_ by J. Louise Mastrantonio and John K. Francis.