mongabay.com logo

Eco-label for rainforest products could boost sustainability

Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com
December 06, 2009
print

Tropical forests around the world continue to fall, largely the result of logging and conversion to agriculture. But new hope for forests has emerged under a scheme that would reward countries for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and degradation. Some variations of the concept, which is known as REDD, would allow for "sustainable forest management" (SFM), that is, reduced impact logging of forests, as well as harvesting of non-wood forest products (NWFPs) like seeds, fruit, and game. But the extent to which this harvesting affects forest ecology, and therefore carbon sequestration, is still poorly understood.

A new paper, published in the open access journal Tropical Conservation Science, proposes a new protocol for assessing human impacts on how effectively seeds get dispersed and seedlings germinate and survive, critical processes for forest health and regeneration. The paper applies the protocol to Andiroba (Carapa surinamensis), an important timber species that produces oil-rich seeds used for a wide range of purposes and are dispersed by large rodents deemed "tasty" by local human populations.


One of the sites where Carapa surinamensis was investigated in French Guiana.
Working at sites in French Guiana, Clément Lermyte and Pierre-Michel Forget of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Brunoy, a suburb of Paris, France, found that the protocol is an effective means to rapidly assess how seed dispersal and seedling recruitment are affected by hunting and logging. Hunting reduced seed dispersal -- possibly by reducing the abundance of seed-scattering rodents -- while canopy gaps resulting from logging, as well as the reduction of seed-eating peccaries by hunters, increased the life expectancy of seedlings.

The authors argue that the results produced by the protocol could be used to create an ecological 'sustainable management' label (eco-label) for the harvesting of forest products and hunting.

"The eco-label will serve to promote all conservation and protection measures useful for the regeneration dynamics of commercial large-seeded hard-fruited species harvested for NTFPs," the authors told mongabay.com.

In other words the eco-label could be used to certify that products sold in international markets have been produced in a manner that doesn't result in long-term damage to the environment.

CITATION: Clément Lermyte and Pierre-Michel Forget 2009. Rapid assessment of dispersal failure and seedling recruitment of large-seeded non-timber forest products trees in a tropical rainforest Full Text PDF. Tropical Conservation Science Vol.2(4):374-387.





Related articles

Attacking the demand side of deforestation

(06/16/2008) A new UK government-sponsored initiative seeks to address the demand side of deforestation by identifying how an organization's activities and supply chains contribute to forest destruction. The initiative, called the Forest Footprint Disclosure Project (FFD Project), will ask companies to "disclose how their operations and supply chains are impacting forests worldwide, and what is being done to manage those impacts responsibly."


Shift from poverty-driven to industry-driven deforestation may help conservation

(08/06/2008) A shift from poverty-driven deforestation to industry-driven deforestation in the tropics may offer new opportunities for forest conservation, argues a new paper published in the journal Trends in Evolution & Ecology.




CITATION:
Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com (December 06, 2009).

Eco-label for rainforest products could boost sustainability.

http://news.mongabay.com/2009/1207-seed_dispersal_tcs.html









Copyright mongabay1999-2013

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated from mongabay.com operations (server, data transfer, travel) are mitigated through an association with Anthrotect,
an organization working with Afro-indigenous and Embera communities to protect forests in Colombia's Darien region.
Anthrotect is protecting the habitat of mongabay's mascot: the scale-crested pygmy tyrant.