Experts Map Strategy to Control Development in Amazon Rain Forest

The chaotic development that is gobbling up the Amazon rain forest could finally be reined in with a new plan developed by officials of Amazon countries and leading scientists from around the world.

“That’s some of the most encouraging news about the Amazon rain forest in recent years,” said Thomas Lovejoy, a tropical ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution and an Amazon specialist.

“It contrasts markedly with a year ago, when there was nothing to read about conservation in the Amazon, especially in Brazil, except bad news,” Lovejoy said in a recent interview.

Sixty percent of the Amazon, the world’s largest tropical rain forest, lies in Brazil, but the forest also covers parts of eight surrounding countries.

Lovejoy was one of the organizers of an unusual workshop held in mid-January in Manaus, Brazil, a sprawling city of 1 million people in the heart of the Amazon. It was the center of Brazil’s once-thriving rubber trade.

The workshop, which brought together all the governments and scientists with interests in the rain forest, culminated with a plan to regulate development in up to 80% of the Amazon region.

It was the first time that all parties concerned with the Amazon had met to pool their knowledge and agree on conservation priorities, the meeting’s participants said.

The plan devised at the workshop has no legal force. But it has broad government support and is likely to serve as a guide for national conservation programs, participants said.

Many of the areas to be preserved will be open to so-called multiple-use development, which preserves the forest while allowing tourism and the commercial exploitation of fibers, fruits and medicinal plants.

Brazil, struggling with a teetering economy and pressured by developers and peasant farmers to clear the forest for cattle ranching or farming, has been ambivalent about the need to conserve the Amazon.

Brazil participated in the Manaus workshop, however, and the setting of priorities was “all done with the blessing of Brazil,” Lovejoy said.

Tropical rain forests are giant, living warehouses for thousands of plant and animal species. The Amazon alone is home to 30% of the world’s plant and animal species.

One study found that a single square yard of leaf litter taken from the deep shadows of the Amazon floor contained 800 ants representing 50 species.

Towering forest canopies up to 300 feet above the forest floor are home to countless birds and insects that live their lives without ever setting foot on the ground. One group of orchid species grows only near the top of the canopy; an entirely different collection of orchids grows at the bottom.

At the Manaus meeting, more than 100 specialists met in small groups to assess conservation priorities.

Insect specialists compared data on such creatures as the stinging ant that defends acacia trees against predators. Mammalogists took inventory of the Amazon’s screeching monkeys. Ichthyologists considered such oddities as the fish that eats fallen fruits and nuts on the Amazon River’s banks when it overflows. Botanists, ornithologists and others did the same.

Then they pooled their information and marked up maps of the Amazon. When they were done, the areas determined to be worth saving covered 70% to 80% of the Amazon.

“The bulk of the Amazon is a biological priority; there’s no way of getting around that,” said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International and an authority on endangered monkeys.

Mittermeier emphasized, however, that the plan set realistic goals for the establishment of national parks and reserves, along with multiple-use areas where some development could occur.

It is not realistic to build a fence around 70% to 80% of the Amazon, he said. Only the most critical areas should be placed off limits to development.

“Ten (percent) to 20% of the entire Amazon should be in protected parks or preserves, ideally,” he said. At present, 2% of the Amazon is protected.

Brazil was not alone in its support for the conservation plan.

“The results of this meeting are a major contribution towards the work that has got to be done,” said Stanley Malone, director of the Suriname Forest Service.

Suriname was one of eight Amazon countries that agreed in 1978 to develop a unified approach to management of the Amazon, Malone said. What the officials lacked, however, was a guide to which areas most need protection.

That determination has now been made, based on the number of different species a given area contains, and on how many of those species are unique to the area.

“Now we’ll have to see what develops from this,” Mittermeier said. A new Brazilian president, Fernando Collor de Mello, was inaugurated this month, and with him comes a new Brazilian environmental policy.

Whether the policy will include support for the Manaus plan is uncertain. “As always, everything depends on key individuals,” Mittermeier said.

“I’m basically always optimistic,” he said. “I feel sure that we can develop appropriate solutions, although it may take a lot of work.”