Current tropical forest conservation measures may not cover principal forest services

In December 2020, a record number of more than 1 million people called for a ban on products at the EU markets that contribute to illegal deforestation and forest degradation, such as illegally produced animal feed. Worldwide, millions of hectares of tropical forest are disappearing, partly because of illegal production of agricultural products for the EU and global markets. However, researchers from Utrecht University (UU) found that current conservation policies for tropical forests, which primarily focus on forests that are relatively rich in plant and animal species, may not cover services that are important for local communities. Their findings were recently published Open Access in the journal Ecological Indicators.

“Tropical forests enable life on land by storing tonnes of CO₂ and safeguarding much of the global biodiversity,” says Gijs Steur, PhD student at UU and lead author of the new study. “These forests also contribute important other services for local communities, such as functioning as a supermarket, pharmacy and church simultaneously. This is also the case for communities in Suriname, where this research took place. For example, many Surinamese feel spiritually connected to their forests, where products from tree and palm species have an important cultural value. Some of these products are even commercially traded, thereby also contributing to local livelihoods.”

At odds with protection policy

Steur researched the ecology of these culturally important and commercially traded species. An analysis of more than 280 samples of Surinamese tropical forests showed that such species predominantly occur in species-poor forests. This finding is at odds with most current conservation policies that primarily focus on protecting species-rich forests. “This means we are risking not adequately protecting the stock of important tree and palm species,” explains Steur. “This may lead to a decrease of their stocks, ultimately negatively affecting the livelihood of the many people that depend on the products of these species.”

In their publication, Steur, together with his co-authors Pita Verweij, René Verburg, Pieter Teunissen and Martin Wassen, call for additional conservation measures to help protect the stocks of culturally important and commercially traded species. “We propose that additional measures could focus on protecting specific forest types, as we found these to be highly relevant in predicting high stocks of these species.”

Publication

The publication is part of Gijs Steur's PhD research on the relationships between ecosystem services and plant diversity in tropical forests, which is funded by the NWO-UU Graduate Program Nature Conservation, Management and Restoration. There is increasing attention for the goods and services that ecosystems provide to humanity, as this can help to find additional arguments for nature conservation. As ecosystem services and biodiversity are assumed to be positively linked, it is hoped that protecting ecosystem services will also help to protect biodiversity. Last year, Steur published a paper which showed that despite these assumptions, little is known about how tropical forest ecosystem services are related to plant diversity.

Steur, G., Verburg, RW, Wassen, MJ, Teunissen, PA, Verweij, PA, 2021. Exploring relationships between abundance of non-timber forest product species and tropical forest plant diversity, Ecological Indicators, Volume 121, 107202, ISSN 1470 -160X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2020.107202